


An Unlocked Door

by Sanctuaria



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bedsharing, Bodhi is such a fifth wheel, F/M, K-2SO meddles, M/M, Nightmares, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, a bit of angst, and somehow they all magically got off Scarif, background spiritassassin, but a happy ending i promise, but it's only 7 chapters so you tell me, everyone meddles, mutual comfort, somewhat slow build, the Rebellion's food is trash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 05:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10824537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: Captain Cassian Andor of the Rebel Alliance knows three things. One, there is a spy on Yavin IV. Two, K-2SO will be the death of him. Three, Jyn Erso has taken to sleeping in his bed.





	1. Chapter 1

Cassian Andor was exhausted. Exhausted from the mission, from almost getting shot, from the two-and-a-half hour debriefing that followed, where he and the rest of his squad had had to detail every minutiae of the op until Draven and the other military leaders present were satisfied. Come to think of it, they probably still weren't, but such was the nature of intelligence work for the Rebellion. There were always more questions to be answered. 

Closing the door to his quarters on Yavin IV, Cassian remembered with no small amount of pride the patience with which his team had met the debriefing—really meaning the  _ bureaucracy _ —despite their universal tiredness. Eventually Cassian had been the one to cut Draven’s first in command off, saying there was nothing more to tell them and that if any of them thought of anything they would report back first thing in the morning. The sighs of relief as soon as they had gotten out of the conference room were palpable. 

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Cassian had instructed them, as if it needed to be said. “We’ve earned it.” Despite their exhaustion, everyone had still looked at Baze and Chirrut as always—well, ever since Kaytoo had discovered that they shared a room with a single bed and decided this was essential knowledge for the rest of them to have. Judging by their matching slight smiles, neither Baze or Chirrut seemed to mind, so Cassian had once again overlooked Kaytoo’s inability to separate private matters from public ones. 

With a small sigh, Cassian sank into the bed, giving his sluggish body a moment’s respite before leaning down to unlace his boots. He pulled them off, placing them on the floor at the foot of his bunk, then stripped himself of his jacket. His blaster he placed on the nightstand, promising himself he would clean it tomorrow. After rinsing his face and hands of Anoat’s dust at the refresher, he practically fell into bed and pulled the covers over himself, determined to get at least a solid six hours before his comm would wake him with its urgent beeping in the morning, a stern military voice informing him that he was needed in the briefing room or the armory or wherever. 

Cassian was in the dark haze that comes halfway to sleep when it occurred to him that he’d left his door unlocked in his exhaustion. Everything in his rebel sensibilities told him to get up and secure it, but…this was Yavin. Friendly territory. 

He needed to learn to relax…

The door squeaked, opened a crack. All thoughts of relaxation flowed out of his head like rain through a storm drain—Yavin IV had plenty of those, lest it flood—as he bolted straight up in bed, reaching his arm out for his blaster. His weariness evaporated and was replaced by pure adrenaline, readying him for a fight. 

A flash of green eyes and brown hair through the glow of his comlink charging on the table was all he needed to identify her. Jyn. Something he couldn’t name kept him from calling out to her.  Her face disappeared from its momentary illumination as the door opened further, this time soundless. Heart pounding in his chest, Cassian painstakingly lowered himself back down onto the bedsheets, trying to stay silent. His ab muscles strained with the weight of the sudden responsibility he's placed on them. Not. A. Sound. Except for a small rustle when his back hit the mattress, he thought he did pretty well. 

Jyn crept closer; Cassian could tell by her light footsteps—bare feet padding across the stone floor. He barely remembered to shut his eyes before she got too close. The sound of clinking reached his ears, a belt buckle being gently placed on the table. Cassian corrected his harsh, ragged breathing to be smooth and slow, and felt the bed dip as she put her weight on it. He could feel her eyes on him as she sat, waiting for a reaction. 

Cassian didn’t move—barely breathed, in all honesty—too overwhelmed by the need to know what she would do, why she was here, and filled with a desperate desire not to spook her. His answer came seconds later as Jyn leaned back, tucked her legs up next to her so that she was curled in the upper corner of his bed, and pulled a bit of extra sheet over herself.

Silence.

He didn’t dare move in case he disturbed her, only listened to the soft sound of her breathing next to him, an arm’s length away. Questions that he didn’t dare voice swirled through his mind, but with much effort, he quieted them. She must be here for a reason. He wouldn't interfere with that. 

* * *

Cassian didn’t know how in the Sith he accidentally fell asleep during the night with her _right there_ _right beside him_ but when he woke up, she was gone. His hand roved over her portion of the bed, feeling barely the faintest hint of her warmth. The scent of her presence lingered—blaster oil and smoke and Rebellion-issue soap and something uniquely and intoxicatingly Jyn, like the freshness of soil after the first rain of the season—promising him that it hadn't been a dream. He rubbed his palm over his face, then rolled out of bed with a mind to start the day. And maybe find Jyn. 

To his surprise, his comlink hadn't gone off yet, maybe Draven was finally taking pity on the base’s newest rebel squadron and was giving them the day off. 

Cassian paused, letting the corner of his mouth twitch upwards. Unlikely. Days off were for Imperial bucketheads trapped inside fleets of Star Destroyers. Most probably, whatever today’s urgent situation would be, it just hadn't come up yet. The Rebellion never ran out of urgent situations. 

He changed clothes for real, not that the gray-and-brown combination he put on was much different from the gray-and-brown combination he had had on before, but at least it was clean. Combing through his hair quickly with his fingers, he belted on his blaster and snapped on the fully charged comm as well. He exited the room to find K-2SO waiting for him.

“You took approximately 7.6 seconds longer to get dressed today,” Kaytoo accused.

“I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“None of your business,” the captain told the droid. 

K-2SO made a noise that sounded suspiciously like  _ hmph. _

“Good morning to you, too,” Cassian grumbled, but he cared too much for Kaytoo to let the droid’s more annoying characteristics bother him. 

“That is a dangerous assumption. We do not yet know if this morning will be ‘good.’”

“Any morning I get to eat breakfast is a good one,” Cassian told him, turning them in the direction of the mess hall. They began to walk down the corridor, occasionally passing other rebels in various states of military, pilot, or civilian dress. 

“I don't get to eat breakfast,” Kaytoo reminded him. He would have sounded petulant if it hadn't been stated so matter-of-fact. 

“You're a droid; you don't need to,” he replied with a smile. “What, you want a blaster  _ and _ breakfast now too?”

“Jyn gave me a blaster. Perhaps I will make my desire for breakfast known to her as well,” said the droid with a definite sniff to his synthetic voice. 

“Speaking of Jyn,” Cassian said as they neared the dining commons. From the smell, it was an eggs and bantha milk day. “Have you seen her yet today?”

“I have not.” K-2SO grabbed the door with one metallic hand and held it open for Cassian. As he approached and was about to thank him, the droid added, “There she is.” 

“Where?” Cassian looked around the mess hall. 

Kaytoo cuffed him on the side of the head, but when the sting subsided his chin was pointed in the right direction—one Jyn Erso, clearing her tray and heading for the exit on the other side of the room. He contemplated running after her, but what would he say? Was he even supposed to know that she’d spent the night with him at all? The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off. 

“Didn't you want her for something?” Kaytoo prompted him. Cassian realized he was standing in the entrance to the mess hall, blocking the doorway, and moved while trying to come up with an excuse. “She's right there.” Kaytoo’s photoreceptors followed her to the opposite door. “You can still catch her.”

“Never mind!” Cassian said quickly, grabbing Kaytoo’s shoulder and steering him as well as one could steer a seven foot tall steel machine toward the table occupied by a few other members of Rogue One. He had said it too quickly to not seem suspicious—the words that is, the statement itself had taken him long enough to think of—but luckily the droid was distracted by Bodhi’s choice of greeting and proceeded to lecture once again on the inane human reliance on the day-starting phrase ‘good morning’. Bodhi looked distinctly regretful of having said anything but there was no way in Malachor Cassian was going to save him from one of K-2SO’s opinionated monologues when that same monologue was distracting him from his own near slip-up. 

Baze and Chirrut were also at the table, with the former devouring a large plate of eggs and the latter working on a bowl of hot porridge. Somehow the blind man was managing to pick around every piece of onion in the bowl, but Cassian didn't question when he was mysteriously able to do things like that anymore. Over the last few weeks since Scarif, he’d adopted a policy of not obsessing over things beyond his ken. He left to get a tray, coming back with Mandalorian grain bread and his own bowl of porridge, which was more of a soup of separated-out rice particles. By the time he returned, Bodhi had been released from K’s hold and was wolfing down his food in between snippets of conversation with the two men from Jedha. Cassian sat down on Baze’s other side just in time to hear his comm activate, beeping insistently at him.

“Andor,” he answered it, holding it up to his ear. 

“Captain Andor, Mon Mothma has requested your presence in Conference Room 3 immediately, along with the droid K-2SO. It is need-to-know only.”

“Copy, on my way.” Cassian snapped the comm back onto his belt, inhaled a few spoonfuls of porridge—at a temperature hot enough to burn the tongue had this not been practically routine for him by now—and stood up from the table. “Kaytoo, let's go.” The droid obediently stood up to follow. 

“Emergency?” Baze asked. 

Cassian flashed him a quick, sardonic smile. “Always.” 

The fastest route to Conference Room 3 was to take a shortcut across the landing pad, although doing so required navigation around the multitude of droids, pilots, and ship mechanics going about their work. No matter what time it was on Yavin IV, the launch bay was always full of activity because ships were coming in from all over the galaxy. Today, the trek across the landing pad involved avoiding a mechanized cart full of rustbuckets heading for engineering, where they would somehow be made into functional droids again, nearly tripping over a quartet of Rebellion younglings that had managed to sneak their way onto the platform, and standing back to allow a squadron of smoking X-wing fighters to come in with little to no power getting to their backwards thrusters. 

A normal day for the Rebellion. It would have been a fairly normal day for him as well if he wasn't so preoccupied with Jyn. And if this meeting had been with Draven instead of Mothma.

Cassian pushed the door to the conference room open before stepping inside, nodding to Mon Mothma, and folding his hands behind his back in Alliance military style. Kaytoo merely stood next to him and observed her, and for that Cassian was thankful—it wasn't often he got called before the Rebellion’s head of state, and unlike Draven she was unused to Kaytoo’s habit of speaking his mind and disregarding authority whenever he saw fit. 

“Captain Andor,” she said, placing her hands on the table in front of her. Shapely fingernails clacked lightly against the wood surface. “A situation has arisen. One that you need to be apprised of. But this is not to leave this room—I trust that you both have experience in this sort of discretion?” 

It was a moot point, given their work in Alliance Intelligence, but Cassian nodded. Even Kaytoo had no problem keeping a secret when told it was a secret. It was when it was implicit that his lack of personal barriers became a problem—like when he catalogued the number of seconds it took for Cassian to get up in the morning and interrogated him about any deviations from the average, or when he had discovered that Baze and Chirrut shared a bunk. “It won't leave this room,” Cassian clarified.

“Good. Then you must know: we have solid reason to believe there is a spy on the base.” 

“There are many spies on Yavin IV,” Kaytoo said, his head swiveling toward Cassian. “One of them is standing right there.” 

“She means an Imperial spy.” 

“Then she should be more specific, so as to avoid misunderstandings in the future.” 

Cassian ignored him; his mind was already locked into Intelligence mode, his jaw tightening. This wouldn't be the first spy they’d ever had, but perhaps the first when they’d had so much to lose. He looked quickly up at Mon Mothma. “How long until the plans are done being analyzed?”

“I see you think along the same lines I do, that the spy’s end goal will either be to steal back the Death Star plans or at the very least destroy them before we can find the weak spot and the best way to hit it.” She sighed. “Our best engineers are working on it, but they do not know exactly how much longer it will take.”

“Mierda,” Cassian muttered in his native tongue. 

“All precautions are being taken,” Mon Mothma informed him, “including taking copies of the plans offworld. However, on your end, I wish you to document anyone acting oddly, out of place, or out of character. A spy is still an exigent threat to the Rebel Alliance, even if he or she fails their primary objective.”

He frowned slightly. “This is not my normal type of mission,” Cassian told her. He was usually the one doing the infiltrating, and until Scarif he had never felt the urge to get to know anyone on base outside of K-2SO. 

“It's not your mission, Captain Andor. You are to report any suspicions you have to Lieutenant Athara, Base Security.”

“Why tell me then?” It was a fair question, Cassian thought, trying to put his uncertainty into words. “There are others better suited to this. I am not normally one of the men playing cards in the commons area; nor am I part of the pilots’ group that spend their afternoons at dice. I…”

“Am not sociable,” Kaytoo supplied helpfully. “And lack friends.”

Cassian shot him a look before turning back to Mon Mothma, who had a grave expression on her face. 

“The newest rebels to receive clearance are the most suspect,” she said carefully.

He stared at her. “You mean Bodhi?”

“Bodhi Rook, yes. As he is a recent defector from the Empire, you can see how his loyalties might be questioned.” At Cassian's outraged look, she added, " _ Regardless _ of how fruitful his intel has turned out to be. Also, Chirrut Îmwe, Baze Malbus, and Jyn Erso.” Cassian bit down on his tongue, hard, trying to remember that this was the head of state of the Alliance that he was talking to despite the red tinges surrounding his vision. "I can trust you to keep your feelings in check, Captain Andor," Mothma said. “You've always followed orders. Even when…” She looked down, sighed. “…when Luna One was shot down over Dathomir.” 

He was stunned, just for a second, before he realized that was her intention. A call sign he hadn't heard in a long time…one he associated now with a bloodstained rebel pilot kneeling in front of him and handing him the worst news of his life. 

Acting as though she hadn’t just sent him reeling, Mon Mothma dismissed him with a nod. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not abandoning my other Rogue One fic, but this has been sitting complete on my laptop’s hard drive longer than the other has even been in existence because I’ve gone through many stages of liking it to feeling it’s not up to par and back again, but I figured today was a good day to finally start posting it. May the 4th be with you.
> 
> Also, if anyone is wondering why all the door hinges squeak/creak on Yavin IV for this story, I blame the humidity.


	2. Chapter 2

Cassian's blood ran cold and electrifying through his veins, but he recovered just enough to nod back to Mothma before exiting the room, Kaytoo following silently. For once Cassian couldn’t suss out immediately what the droid was thinking—or maybe he just wasn’t putting in the effort to—but regardless the droid didn’t seem particularly perturbed by Mon Mothma’s directive. It was just another set of orders, regarding another set of rebels…no matter how fond Kaytoo may have grown of one or two of them. 

Cassian on the other hand… He felt blindsided, so few weeks after Scarif, for this to come about. Just when he had finally convinced himself that his squad was here to stay, that Baze and Chirrut preferred to fight rather than leave to rebuild NiJedha, that Bodhi was becoming comfortable, that Jyn was here for the long haul, this tore it all asunder. And the addition, the casual slip-in, of the name Luna One…

He forced himself to put Luna One to the side, a somewhat less than gargantuan task twenty years after it happened. The spy was the real problem; he couldn't care less about Mothma’s mind games. 

Or so he told himself. 

The spy couldn't be Jyn. It couldn't be. No matter what Mothma’s suspicions, Cassian knew her better than that, didn't he? It couldn't be her. Not when everything was maybe just starting to almost fall into place between them. 

_ Just starting to fall into place? _ he demanded of himself a second later. Jyn sneaking into his bed one night did not preclude  _ falling into place _ . Not when he didn't know what her intentions were, or if it would happen again. Or if he even wanted it to. 

Blast, did he want it to. 

But that wasn't the point. The point: there was a spy. And almost all of Rogue One were suspects. And that included Jyn. Who had snuck into his bed. 

For the love of Fest, why did his mind always circle back to that? Jyn Erso was a mystery, and one he wasn't going to solve by agonizing over it. 

What it came down to…he trusted his squad. They’d been through too much together  _ not _ to trust them. Baze and Chirrut, despite their quirks, were honorable men and good fighters who had turned every ounce of devotion as Guardians of the Whills to hatred of the Empire as Rebel soldiers. Bodhi was shy, too shy sometimes, but always quick to smile and eager to learn and help out wherever he could. Cassian wanted to trust them, and so he would. The investigation would continue on its own, and when nothing turned up pointing to any of Rogue One it would be because there was nothing to find. He was 99% sure of that. 

Kaytoo would have told him the correct confidence level was much lower than that, but he didn’t ask. 

However, he should've known the Intelligence training of Captain Cassian Andor wouldn't let him off that easy. 

That night, Cassian told himself not to wait for her. He told himself this in the refresher while he washed his face. He told himself in front of the mirror while he trimmed the scruff around his face and neck. He told himself while he changed his clothes, placed the comm in its holder to charge, and turned out the lights. But when he was finally in bed, he still found himself gazing through the darkness at where he knew the door to be. He was expecting her; he couldn't help it. He wanted her to come to him, to have found what she was looking for last night and come seeking it again. He wanted to  _ be there _ for her even if it just meant pretending to be asleep while she crawled into his bed. Most of all, he wanted to know that it was him, Cassian, that she sought out. The thought filled him with a kind of excitement, a giddiness, that he could neither understand nor explain. 

Because he hadn't known how much he craved having Jyn lying beside him in the night until he’d experienced it for the first time. They’d been through so much together and never talked about it—never really acknowledged why Cassian had shown up with a group of soldiers for a suicide mission, why she let him pull her away from a last blow on Krennic, why she had hugged him on the beach as they waited to die. 

With a small groan, Cassian forced himself to roll from his side onto his back and stare up at the ceiling instead. His ears were alert for the squeak of the door opening and he lay still, waiting, as minutes turned to hours. The last look he gave the clock was three standard hours past midnight, at which point he relegated himself unhappily to sleep. 

In his dream, he was standing with his arms folded across his back in a long corridor somewhere deep within the Rebel base on Yavin IV. Footsteps approached him, and he turned his head to see a squadron of Rebellion security forces with Mon Mothma at the head. As they passed him, he could see who their prisoners were—Baze and Chirrut and Bodhi and Jyn, hands shackled, eyes downcast. He wanted to call out to them, to demand answers or protest their imprisonment he wasn't sure, but his arms were as mobile as if he was in a straitjacket himself and his mouth wouldn't move in the slightest. He stood stiff as a board as they marched past, and at the end of the line, General Draven looked at him squarely. His commanding officer somehow morphed into the figure of his mother in her rebel flight suit, her call sign  _ Luna One _ stitched into the fabric of the pocket. 

“Viva la Rebelión,” she said, piercing him with her sharp brown eyes. The group kept walking, leaving Cassian trapped in place as they marched farther and farther away. 

Suddenly K-2SO was beside him. “It's for the best,” the droid told him seriously. Kaytoo clapped him on the shoulder in what he supposed was a comforting gesture and he fell through the floor, spinning into the blackness. 

Cassian woke with a start, covered in a sheen of sweat with the covers askew around him, and was immediately glad Jyn had not shown up the night before. He shouldn't have expected it; she didn't owe him anything. It had never happened before, so why would it happen again? What he wanted was entirely separate from what she did, no matter what desperate thoughts may have flitted through each of their minds in the lift on Scarif. 

As for his dream…he didn't even want to think about what that meant. The thought of his newfound friends—dare he call them that?  _ comrades _ was a safer word, for now—being traitors was not a subject he wanted to dwell on, no matter what the opinion of his subconscious.

Jyn also didn't appear the night after. Cassian refused to let himself feel disappointed over the fact when he got up in the morning, convincing himself that it was—it had always been—a one-time thing. Besides, he thought as he scrubbed a gritty soap over his face and rinsed with lukewarm water that smelled vaguely of the swamp outside, if it was dreams like his that drew her here, he wouldn't want her to witness them either. 

The next night felt no more hopeful. Jyn curling up next to him, the soft sound of her breaths, and the delicate warmth radiating off her body all had taken on a pearly quality in his memory, as if he had dreamed the whole experience. He had nearly convinced himself of this when the telltale creak of his door opening reached his ears. His head twisted, eyes automatically seeking out her form in the darkness, heartbeat quickening in anticipation and a kind of liquid joy that had flooded his veins at her presence. 

Jyn slipped inside much as she had the first night, and like then Cassian was careful not to move or give any indication of his wakefulness. Or, worse, that he had waited up for her. The padding of bare feet across stone paused at the table, and the clunk of her belt buckle being placed down was slightly muffled by the small stack of paper reports he’d placed there. He glanced downward to find himself already shifted over to the right side of the bed, giving her much more room than before and making it almost seem as if the bed was made for two. He was practically falling off the edge on his side, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to care overmuch. 

Somewhere between Jyn tucking her legs down under the covers and Jyn folding her arms underneath her head and resting against them—he should have an extra pillow! but then she would know he knew—Cassian realized with a jolt that he had forgotten to close his eyes. A second later, he decided it didn't matter under the cover of darkness. Eyes open allowed him to see what he could of her as she crept into his bed and curled up beside him, allowed him to prove to himself that this was real. His mind hadn't made it up. 

This was real. Jyn was really sleeping next to him. The amount of happiness this evoked in him scared him slightly, but that was a matter for another time. He had known he had a fondness for Jyn for a while now, tracing back to the moment he’d found her on her knees in Saw Gerrera’s base grappling with the final message from her father, or maybe even before. Maybe he’d already seen something in her when he allowed her to keep that blaster. Having  _ feelings _ for her…that was something newer, something he couldn't pinpoint in the weeks they’d known each other. Her urging the Rebel leaders to fight. Her speech to the soldiers who’d come with them. And Scarif, so many times on Scarif. But he’d never been sure she felt the same way, never could quite identify the look in her eyes in the lift. On the beach. 

But she was here, now, for a reason. He would hold onto that. Hope. He smiled in the darkness, remembering.  _ “Rebellions are built on hope.” _


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian kriffs up.

Honestly, Cassian couldn't even describe the difference in the way they treated each other during the day. On one hand, it was completely normal. They often saw each other in the mess hall for shared meals and sat at the same table with the rest of the Rogue One squadron. They talked shop—missions, predictions about the Rebellion’s next move, the new A290 covert field edition of his preferred blaster. They talked like comrades in war—the annoying habits of K-2SO, the swampy smell of the water on Yavin, the quality of the food. They talked like friends—jointly teasing Bodhi about the new red-headed fighter pilot in his division, occasionally exchanging stories about their early lives on Fest for him and Coruscant and Lah’mu for her. 

On the other hand, he couldn't help but feel a tightening in his chest every time he looked at her, and she seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time gazing at his face when she thought he wasn't paying attention, as if trying to puzzle out what she saw there. Maybe it was in Cassian’s imagination, but it seemed like there was a level of reserve between them that hadn’t existed before—a carefulness in the way they treated each other, as if they both were trying too hard not to give anything away. 

It didn’t help that his knowledge of their shared nights together wasn’t the only thing he was hiding. The fact that they—that  _ she _ —was under investigation for being an Imperial spy seemed to Cassian like something he should divulge, but at the same time that would be directly disobeying his orders. It wasn’t hurting her, exactly, so he kept quiet. Following orders without question had gotten him this far in Rebel Intelligence, in the rank of Captain, and he couldn’t just abandon that now. He’d done and seen too many terrible things for him to consider it, no matter the sinking feeling of guilt he got when he looked at them. 

He didn’t expect to see her that night, and readied himself for bed later than normal with the appropriate resignation. He’d spent the night before with her near, so he wasn’t going to be greedy enough to expect two nights in a row, especially given the long gap—because for some reason now three nights was long—between the first and the second. 

Which was why, when his door creaked open, Jyn appeared to him like an angel of the moons of Iego. His breath hitched in his chest as she slipped inside, and he remembered to close his eyes this time as she approached. There was less hesitation than previously as she tucked herself in beside him. He’d left her plenty of space—leaving him on the very edge of the bed again—and she situated herself with almost a foot of space between them but close enough for him to hear her soft huffs of breath and be warmed by the gentle heat that radiated through the bedsheets. It was quiet in the room, quiet enough to hear the surging of his heart, and wonder once again if she knew he was faking it, or if he had kept up the masquerade well enough to hide the truth. 

Cassian fell asleep, happy, to the sound of her breathing. 

A heavy jolt of pain lanced through his back and his eyes flew open. The lights had begun to come on, bathing the room in a murky gray morning atmosphere, and the swath of blankets was tangled up around his legs and chest. He was somehow on his back on the hard stone floor, and it took him a moment to figure out how that was possible. 

Of course. He’d fallen off the bed. 

Jyn. 

He barely managed to lift his head upwards to see her exposed by the way he had yanked the covers down with him. She threw him a wide-eyed look before scarpering, darting for the door. It shut behind her before he’d managed to blink the stars out of his eyes. 

_ Pfassk _ , he was such a moof-milker. He muttered a few choice swear words of the Rebellion and then a few more in his native tongue for good measure as he reached out for the bedpost with twinging back muscles. He hauled himself upward with some difficulty, then rolled his shoulders experimentally. The ache was painful but bearable. 

Cassian looked around at his empty room and cursed himself again. He should have been more careful; he knew she was a flight risk. He’d always known—that was why he took such care to pretend he was none the wiser about her nocturnal visits. For good reason, Jyn Erso didn't trust people with her heart or with her weaknesses or her insecurities. He had known that going in—hell, they were cut from the same cloth—but she had sought out  _ him _ for comfort. And Cassian had kriffed it up.

He let himself collapse back into the bed, face smushing to become one with the pillow.

* * *

He woke up several hours later when the lights were nearly on full. His neck had an uncomfortable crick in it from sleeping on his stomach with his head jutted at an awkward angle for oxygen’s sake. Sighing, he picked himself up from the mattress and set his bare feet on the cold floor, letting the last of his sleepiness be shocked out of him. Running his head through his hair, he made for a change of clothes and washed his face in the ‘fresher. Coming out, he noticed something out of place lying on the table on top of a stack of reports for Draven. In her haste to leave— _ run away _ , the cynical portion of his mind reminded him—she’d left her belt behind.  

Cassian picked the article of clothing up off the table and tried his best not to examine it as he walked to the door, but couldn’t help noticing that it was not Rebellion standard-issue and thus was the same one she’d worn on Jedha and Scarif and ever since he’d known her, really. The leather was worn and the buckle heavy and rough-wrought. He held it in his left hand as he opened the door and stepped out, only to find himself face to face with K-2SO. 

The droid looked at Cassian, then at the belt in his hand, then back at Cassian. “That is Jyn’s belt.”

He decided it best to neither confirm nor deny that fact. “Do you know where she is?”

“No,” Kaytoo replied. His circuits whirred as his head dropped down to look at the belt again. 

“Well, I’m going to find—”

“Hey, guys!” From a little ways down the hall, Bodhi walked quickly up to join them, a friendly smile on his face. “Mess hall, breakfast?”

“Cassian has Jyn’s belt. He is looking for her,” Kaytoo informed the former Imperial pilot. 

The young man’s eyebrows knit together as his gaze dropped to the belt in his hand and then flicked back up to Cassian. He gave him a strange, unsure look. “Uh, that’s, uh…nice…?”

“Yes, breakfast,” Cassian said. Perhaps a bit too loud, he couldn’t tell. “I’ll meet you guys there.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heel and sped off down the hallway, knowing if this had been a covert operation for the Rebellion he would have about sixty-two laser burns on his body right now. 

So much for looking for Jyn. She was probably in the mess hall already—with Bodhi and Kaytoo on their way—and there was no way in Malachor he was just going to hand it over to her in front of the entire squadron. He took a flight of stairs two at a time, eager to get rid of the incriminating object as quickly as possible, not that anything even vaguely untoward had happened. No matter what the surprised and slightly embarrassed look in Bodhi’s eyes had suggested.

Another flight of stairs led him to a third set of barracks, where most of Rogue One’s quarters were located. Generally the rooms were smaller and some even necessitated the use of a communal refresher down the hall. Cassian remembered the days when he’d lived down here, before he’d earned his higher military ranks and gotten moved up into the more spacious living accommodations, not that that was a word that would ever be used on its own to describe housing on a rebel base. 

He found Jyn’s and knocked, suddenly realizing that he had no idea what he would say if she actually answered. Fortunately she did not, and Cassian set the belt down for a moment to pull two thin metal tools from his pocket. He glanced up and down the empty corridor before inserting them into the lock, feeling around for the pins and beginning to massage them upward in set patterns, one by one. After a few minutes, he heard a decisive click and the handle turned downward. Slipping the lockpick back into his pocket, he picked up the belt and pushed the door open.

Jyn’s room was both dark and empty—which was a good thing, because if Jyn had been there she would have murdered him for breaking into her room without permission. The possessions scattered about numbered even fewer than Cassian’s, and none struck him with a sense that Jyn Erso lived here, not just any other rebel on the base. Even though he himself did not put much stock by sentimentality, the thought still evoked an ache deep within his gut. 

Cassian set the belt down on the table, then changed his mind and headed for the chest of drawers where he supposed she kept her clothes. With any luck, she wouldn’t even remember she’d left the belt in his room when she found it there. Opening the top drawer, Cassian sucked in his breath quickly at what he saw and shut it even quicker. Nope, not that one. He went one down with his cheeks burning slightly though there was no one around to see. 

The middle drawer was a much safer choice, and he tucked the belt inside next to a small pile of nearly identical shirts and pants. He pushed the drawer back in and headed for the door, ready to rejoin the squad at breakfast and hope Bodhi had forgotten about the oddness of earlier and that the data had been lost in Kaytoo’s circuits in his absence. 

He opened the door and stepped out into the hall. He surreptitiously pulled it closed behind him, only to look to his left and see Chirrut and Baze coming out of their room a few doors down. Baze and Chirrut stopped, a small smile playing around Chirrut’s mouth. Cassian swallowed as he realized what this must look like. 

Before he could even try to explain himself, the two men walked towards him. Baze grunted as he passed, while Chirrut clapped Cassian on the back. “All is as the Force wills it.” The two Guardians of the Whills reached the end of the hallway and turned the corner out of sight. 

Well, now there was no way he was going up to breakfast. Not a chance. Not when there was a possibility of them letting Jyn know that they… _ suspect _ . He’d already had enough trouble making prolonged eye contact with them and on one hand not wondering if all they were could be a lie and on the other feeling immensely guilty for not telling them that they were currently under investigation, which he knew meant communications screened, perhaps even them being tailed or surveilled in public places. He couldn’t go against the orders of the Rebel Alliance; he’d sacrificed too much already to leave anything to chance. 

Cassian returned to his quarters to address the stack of reports for Draven, thumbing through them all to see if any were possibly less tedious than the others and thus where he should start. None were, so he tackled the top one first, sifting through dreary charts and dossiers of troop movements, most of which involved the Rebellion forces being pinned down and requesting reinforcements or otherwise hunkering down and picking off Imperial troops one by one. 

Hours passed as he scrutinized the documents, adding his own notes in the margins and strategic insight if anything sprang to mind. Mostly he agreed with what the commanders on the ground had already suggested, and he made note of that as well, wondering why Draven had to get a second opinion— _ his _ second opinion, to be specific—on all this. He became exceedingly hungry as he was finishing up the stack a little past midday, his stomach expressing its displeasure through loud growls and rumblings. Cassian placated it with strips of dried bantha meat from his emergency rations, still not willing to brave the mess hall. 

Once he was done, he decided the best place to hide next—yes, he was fully aware that he was hiding—was the sniper range, and while he didn’t exactly need the practice what with the missions every week, it wouldn’t hurt. Plus droids were not allowed inside because it had an internal armory, so even Kaytoo couldn’t find him there. Three flights of stairs upward and then a mile jog to the range comprised a good chunk of his workout for the day by the time he arrived and signed an A290 sniper rifle under his name. He found a decent slope to set up on and placed the weapon on the grass, balancing it on the flat portion of the metal. He put his eye to the scope, sighting the target three quarters of a mile away. He slowly moved his finger over the trigger, careful to keep the little x centered over the heart of the Imperial silhouette. 

His comm beeped. He drew in a large breath of humid air before setting the rifle on its side and pulling the comm off his belt. “Andor.”

“This is Draven. Meet me at headquarters.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be there in ten,” Cassian replied. He pushed himself to his knees and picked up his rifle. He dropped it back where he’d found it and started the trek back into the Rebel base proper, entering the large, doubly-thick doors under the watchful eyes of the guards and taking the lift ten floors down to the Rebel Intelligence headquarters. Six more rebels joined him in the lift, four whom Cassian didn’t recognize and two whom he did, as they were well-known pilots for several of the Rebellion’s largest troop transports. His mother had done that once upon a time, when she wasn’t in the cockpit of an X-wing or kissing him goodnight. 

All of the others exited the lift within three to six floors, however, leaving Cassian to descend down to the deepest reaches of the base alone. Along with the computer servers, the file archives, and the classified battle plans, the Intelligence headquarters were hidden at the very bottom of the underground facility, kept safe from surface missiles and anything but cave-ins by several hundred feet of rock. Intelligence was recognizable for its Gamorrean-glass walls that at all times were lit up with galactic maps, planetary maps showing troop movements, and surveillance feeds, though not many eyes ever made it down here. Cassian had had to go through no less than six security measures in order to exit the lift.

Draven was waiting for him in the darkened room with its lit walls, his mouth set in a thin line. “A mission?” Cassian asked, unperturbed by his superior’s usual facial expression. 

“Yes. The Empire has acted much more quickly than we anticipated on the Kwymar sector, and in particular the planet Telos. The small Rebel installation there has been almost completely overrun, but there are still some assets we would like to retrieve from the planet before the Imperials gain complete control of the system,” Draven told him. He gestured at the wall in front of them, where a picture of a hard, blood red stone materialized. “This is aszardinite, one of the strongest minerals that can still be cut with lasers.”

“You're sending me there to collect a bunch of rocks?” Cassian asked. 

“The mineral is essential to building Alliance infrastructure and machinery, but that's not what we’re looking for. We’ve exported enough of it off Telos that your own shipload wouldn't matter. What we need is to extract a man named Al-Tor Rish. He's the expert on the refining process and the uses of the mineral, but he refused to leave his home because to do that would be to declare for the Alliance. He and his wife Alise live on the outskirts of Thani, formerly Telos’s capital city. Exact coordinates will be uploaded into your ship.”

“What is the likelihood this will be a rescue operation instead of a kidnapping?” Cassian asked astutely, reading between the lines. 

Draven shook his head. “Sounds like a question for your droid.”

“Will we have backup? Are there still Rebel forces on the planet?”

“Scattered, nothing concrete.” The commander fixed his gaze on Cassian. “This is not an evacuation, no matter what it may look like on the ground. Will your squadron be able to handle that?”

“I'll keep them in line,” he promised. Already he was imagining the difficulty he was bound to face doing so, seeing in his mind’s eye a sullen and sarcastic newly-minted rebel tearing recklessly into a firefight to scoop a little girl out of the way on Jedha. Jyn was  _ not _ going to like this. 

“You’d better,” was all Draven said in reply. “Dismissed. Brief your team and prep; you'll leave at 0900 tomorrow to be at the blockade at 1300. Our contact will upload the forged scandocs to you at that time so that you can reach the surface.”

Cassian nodded, his arms folded behind his back. “Yes, sir.” He exited the room, taking the lift back upwards. He fiddled with the comm’s frequency dial, then raised it to his face and spoke into it. “Kaytoo.”

“I found Jyn,” the droid said. “Where have you been?” The voice was accusatory. 

“Good. We have a mission. Get her and the others to meet me in the landing bay,” he ordered, ignoring the question. In Cassian’s experience, that was a good place to talk without being overheard because there was so much else going on around them, especially with the possibility of conference rooms being bugged by the spy. 

“We will meet you there,” came Kaytoo’s reply. “Also, I find your skirting of my question to be quite peculiar.”

“It’s really not, Kay,” Cassian replied before shoving the comm back into his belt as the lift reached the surface level and slowed to a stop. The doors opened, hitting him with a blast of misty air to replace the stale, electronic scent that dominated ten floors below. 

He delayed meeting them until he had talked to Lt. Ignioko, a Twi’lek woman perpetually dressed in a flight suit though her job on the base was the scheduling of departing and landing aircraft. She informed him that they would be taking a stolen cargo shuttle that was neither overtly Imperial or Alliance but rather one commonly used in the Kwymar system a few years ago. Only then did he approach the rest of Rogue One, harkening them over with a wave of his hand and jerk of his head. 

They came as a group, Baze and Chirrut striding confidently forward at the head, Jyn and Bodhi lost somewhere in the middle, and K-2SO bringing up the rear. Cassian noticed the droid was glancing behind them every so often and recognized a kindred thought about avoiding eavesdroppers and keeping any eye out for anything suspicious while he briefed the squad. Two pairs of eyes were better than one, especially when one of them was Kaytoo’s. He always had a knack for seeing what other people didn't want him to, usually to Cassian’s detriment. 

“So, I hear we have a mission?” Baze asked in his booming voice. 

“What's the mission?” Bodhi added as they formed a tight circle around him, sounding equal parts eager and nervous. 

“Extraction off the planet Telos IV in the Kwymar sector,” Cassian told them. 

“Telos is under Imperial control,” Kaytoo said. 

“Which is why we’ll go in quick and quiet. There's a man critical to the infrastructure upgrades of the Rebellion still on the planet.” 

“Do you have the latest info on Telos?” Jyn asked the droid. Cassian briefly wondered if she was not looking at him on purpose, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. There were more important things to think about right now. 

“Telos is currently 83% Imperial controlled, with a blockade covering 66% of the planet’s surface, centered around the planet’s capital, Thani.”

“That's where we’re headed,” Cassian cut in. “The man lives with his wife on the outskirts of the city. It's also unknown if he will welcome our extraction or not, but we will have to convince him one way or another.” 

“By ‘convince,’ he means ‘take by force,’” Kaytoo announced helpfully. At Cassian’s glare, he added, “If necessary.” 

“Let’s get packing,” Cassian directed the team. He placed his hand against the ship they would be taking. “Bodhi, you know how to fly this thing?”

“I—I think so,” Bodhi replied. “Shouldn't be much different from what I was piloting for the Empire, except the main engine is a Mark XVII instead of an XVIII and the thrust will be minorly impacted—” 

“Just get in there and figure it out,” Cassian told him, allowing the younger man a small smile despite the sternness in his voice as he gave the orders. “Jyn, emergency supplies. Bacta kits, rations. Chirrut, weapons and ammo. Baze, you can help me secure all of it. And we’ll need Telosian-style clothing as well to blend in—”

“What's the weather like?” Jyn asked, again speaking to Kaytoo. 

“Unpredictable. The atmosphere has only grown more unstable since large mining companies took control of the government during the Clone Wars and abolished all pollution restrictions. It rains quite often, and the rain is highly acidic.” 

“Protective layers,” Cassian nodded. 

The group split, each with their own task, while he and Baze began lifting the heavy cases from the cargo ship’s floor into secured netting. None of them spoke much except for Bodhi after he emerged from the cockpit. “I can definitely fly it,” he assured Cassian.

“There is a 11% chance of crash landing,” Kaytoo said aloud. 

“I'll have you as my copilot,” Bodhi told him. The droid made a low humming noise but declined to state the new odds, and Bodhi ran off to help Chirrut with two cases of weapons. 

Cassian checked inside them to make sure they were all there when the two of them dropped the cases off at the ship—Baze’s heavy repeater cannon, which took up an entire case by itself; Jyn’s preferred blaster and truncheons; Cassian’s A290 with its snap-on sniper parts; and the small stun weapon Bodhi had been learning to use that could knock a stormtrooper out cold in three seconds flat. Chirrut's staff was the only one missing, but Cassian knew he’d somehow gotten away with it not being classified as a weapon and thus it was kept in his quarters, so he trusted the man to bring it with him tomorrow. 

By the time they were finished packing the cargo transport with clothing and supplies, refueling, running ship diagnostics, and otherwise making sure it was spaceworthy, it was well past time to head down a level to the mess hall for dinner. Cassian ate with them this time, although the conversation was somewhat subdued in the way it always was before a mission. Baze and Chirrut told stories of their days as Guardians of the Whills to a rapt audience—Bodhi—while on the other half of the table, Jyn, Cassian, and Kaytoo discussed strategy in low voices. When the meal was over, they all looked to him, and Cassian could tell they were waiting for some sort of instruction. 

“Get a good night’s sleep,” he told them, allowing the corner of his mouth to curl upward in a small smirk. He waited for everyone to look at Baze and Chirrut with similar expressions. 

They didn't. 

“No shenanigans,” he added, hoping for the desired effect. 

A second later, he realized they were all looking at him and Jyn. He felt his cheeks flush for the second time today against his will, and Cassian turned quickly before any of them could spot it, although he heard the boom of Baze’s laugh as they walked away. Kaytoo was the only one who stayed with him, gazing at him seriously through synthesized white eyes. “ _ That _ was suspicious.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rogue One goes on mission to Telos IV.

Nights before missions were always tense for Cassian. There was no way around it. Simply knowing what lay in store for him the next day was enough to set him on edge. Knowing he would be fighting for his life. Knowing he would be shooting to kill. Knowing that there was a chance that he—or any of them, now, those that he called  _ comrades _ and  _ friends _ —would never set foot on Yavin IV again. 

It was a lot to live with for one night. 

This particular night, he distracted himself with a quest for a pillow. A pillow for Jyn, to be exact. Now that he’d left her belt in her room—his new euphemism for  _ fallen off the bed and watched her flee _ —there was really no point in keeping up the masquerade that he didn't know anymore. Which meant she could have a pillow too, instead of having to rest her head on her arms. 

He found a spare one in a supply closet at the end of the hallway and tucked it under his arm. Cassian walked quickly back to his room, remembering all too well the reaction of the team the last time he’d been seen doing something vaguely suspicious and Jyn-related. Luckily no one was out in the hall and he made it back uninterrupted. He fluffed the pillow absentmindedly before setting it on the bed next to his in her usual spot, the side closest to the door. He was betting heavily with his emotions—his anticipation—that she would show up tonight. 

_ Betting _ being a euphemism for  _ hoping _ . 

After getting ready for the night, he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, fast becoming his ritual position in which to wait for her when he wasn't impatiently eyeing the door. It occurred to him that waiting up for her he got even less sleep than he used to, especially on the nights she didn't show up, but he couldn't bring himself to care about a few extra bouts of yawning in the morning. Not when the alternative was seeing Jyn sneak into his room with his own eyes, confirming the idea that  _ maybe _ what he’d felt on Scarif with a woman he barely knew was real and  _ maybe _ she felt it too and  _ maybe _ they were both just undamaged enough to see it come to something in the midst of a war, a rebellion, and a hundred other things that said it couldn't.

The door creaked, and he shut his eyes reflexively and slowed his breathing, rejoicing internally like a madman all the while. He allowed himself a peek through slitted eyelids after the clink of her belt being set on the table reached his ears. His night vision enabled him to make out just enough to see her freeze three feet from the bed at the sight of the extra pillow.  _ Her _ pillow. 

Don't run away, Cassian thought desperately. He could imagine the hesitation on her face, see her biting her lower lip the way she did when she didn't think anyone was looking and could afford to drop the tough-as-nails act for a few seconds. He could imagine the indecision behind her stormy gray-green eyes as her mind battled out what was  _ prudent _ versus what she  _ wanted _ —and he hoped beyond hope he was what she wanted. 

His silent prayer was heard, answered. Jyn lifted the covers with one deft hand, sliding underneath the sheets well on her side of the bed, but tonight, neither of them was in danger of falling off of it. He heard a small huff of breath and then a sigh as she repositioned herself, facing with her back to him as always. She was closer than she’d ever been before, with only about six inches of space between them—maybe as little as five—and Cassian imagined that in the quiet darkness he could even hear her heart beating in such close proximity to his. 

Cassian awoke automatically much earlier than normal but still was surprised to find her next to him, asleep, when he rolled over to check. Though he supposed she didn't know about his habit of waking early before missions, he felt a surge of triumph to find that she hadn't slipped away in the night like so many times before. He slid his legs gently out of bed and then slowly raised his torso to stand so as to not wake her, then padded to the refresher. He washed his face with the water on its lowest, quietest setting other than a dribble.

An abrupt urge to tuck a lock of stray brown hair out of her face overtook him as he drew near to her again, and he wrestled it into submission before he dared look at her once more. He dressed quickly, changing shirt and pants and pulling on a jacket. The sound of rustling blankets alerted him as he was adjusting his collar, and he turned around to see Jyn stirring. Her eyelids fluttered, and for a moment she gazed blinkingly at him with all the innocence and openness of a child ignorant of war and death and suffering and all the other horrible things they’d both seen far too early in their lives. A moment later, the guards were up with the usual wary hardness to her gaze, but Cassian didn't forget what he saw. Even first thing in the morning—especially first thing in the morning?—Jyn Erso could take his breath away. 

Not that he would have it any other way. 

“Go—od morning,” he said, voice cracking like a fumbling teenage boy.

She smiled, not just a quirk of the lips as Jyn was apt to do, but a real smile. One that gave a glimpse of white teeth and that went all the way to her eyes, making the thin, ever-present layer of ice melt just a little bit. Jyn didn't say anything as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, stood, picked up her belt, and left. But she didn't need to.

That was a smile he would carry around with him for the rest of the day. The rest of his life, maybe, if he was fortunate. 

Despite the impending op, he could feel that his spirits were lifted as he went about his pre-mission checks. He scrutinized the diagnostics reading of the ship, inspected the med cases for rips or tears in the bacta bags, verified the fuel tank was full, and confirmed their flight plan with Lt. Ignioko to ensure their path wouldn't take them through any active war zones so that they could stay under the radar. He was especially careful about it this time, with the knowledge of an unknown enemy lurking about, in case the spy had decided to turn saboteur. When he had ascertained that everything was as it should have been—how they’d left it yesterday evening—he descended the stairs to the mess hall. 

Chirrut’s staff was propped up against Rogue One’s usual table, the crystals set in it glinting under the artificial light. Cassian was the last to arrive, setting his plate of greenish-yellow eggs and some sort of pan-seared meat down at the end next to Jyn, the only spot that was left. He nodded to all of them, taking note of the fact that they had taken his advice of wearing protective layers seriously. Chirrut and Baze wore weaves of black and brown covered in overcoats of similar colors. Bodhi had donned a sturdy, black leather jacket that almost seemed to dwarf him but that Cassian supposed had been the best the Rebellion had to offer on short notice. Jyn and Cassian were both outfitted in what they had worn on Jedha—the furred hood for him and layered cowl for her. 

At precisely eight-fifty standard time Cassian signaled to them and they all stood up from the table, disposing of dishes on their way out of the mess hall. They headed directly for their ship, dodging out of the way of a crew of astromech repair droids whistling through in a hurry. Jyn, Cassian, Baze, and Chirrut strapped in in the back of the cargo transport while Bodhi and K-2SO dealt with flight control up front. 

“We’re good to go!” Bodhi called back to them after a few minutes. He felt the rumble of the engines underneath them, felt pushed down into his seat slightly as the ship lurched upward from the launch bay floor. Then the inertial dampeners kicked in, and nothing could be felt except the general thrumming of the ship around them. Yavin IV’s pyramidal structures grew smaller and smaller out the port window and then the entire planet did as well as they banked steeply upward, heading into the vastness of space. Individual stars turned into streaks of blue-white light as they made the jump to lightspeed. 

Cassian glanced sideways at Jyn. Green-gray eyes met his, but he couldn't read the thoughts within their depths. He settled back for the long ride to Telos.

* * *

Opening the cargo bay doors to the atmosphere of Telos IV, Cassian understood with a new clarity what Kaytoo had been referring to when he had indicated the need for protective layers. At once any semblance of clean air was sucked out of the ship by a wet wind carrying an acrid smell and taste on its breath. Lightning flashed somewhere high in the clouds, but no rain fell and Cassian had no doubt if it did that he wouldn't want to be drinking it. Even a few lungfuls of the Telosian air had him wanting to cough incessantly. The dirt beneath the ship was a sickly green color, covered in moss or mold he didn't want to know, and steak vents exuding an ugly black tar occasionally threw foul-stenched ash up into the air. It wasn't just  _ polluted _ ; that wasn't a strong enough word for it. This was a planet that was  _ ravaged _ . 

He found Bodhi looking at him with a somewhat queasy look on his face. “Let's make this quick,” Cassian barked. He pulled on his jacket a little more firmly and was joined at the front of the group by Jyn, who had tugged the scarf part of her hood up to cover her mouth and nose. He didn't know if it helped or not with the smog but he nodded approvingly. 

They were parked in the trader’s lot, advertising new scandocs that had them as low-class merchants from Corellia. Their target—the man they were trying to extract—was located a mile away through the winding marketplace, which had Imperial installations on either side and regular patrols. However, it also had large crowds, which Cassian hoped would be their saving grace. Kaytoo stayed with the ship, which meant Bodhi got to come with them, something that put Cassian on edge as well as made him feel oddly protective. 

There was a  _ reason _ he usually worked alone. But he couldn't say he wasn't glad to have all of Rogue One behind him. 

The five of them trooped away from the ship, adopting a shuffling gait to match that of those around them. As the crowd thickened, Cassian felt Chirrut and Baze slip away from them. “Stick close to Jyn,” Cassian said without turning to look at the pilot. “And if you're stopped, let her do the talking.”

“Even if she looks like she's about to punch her way out of it instead?” Bodhi’s eyes held a glimmer of humor, and Cassian allowed himself a small smirk as Jyn scowled. 

“Then you can talk. Can't get much worse,” he told him. 

Jyn scuffed her boot against the ground. “I'd win, you know. Against any of these bucketheads.”

“No doubt. But I don't want to get trampled in the commotion that would cause.” With a flick of his hand, Cassian signaled Jyn and Bodhi to split off. A moment later, they too were hidden among the throng. 

A small child ran past Cassian, dodging in and out of sets of legs. Distracted momentarily, he watched the boy duck under a pottery cart, something shiny glinting in his hand. Cassian realized he was a pickpocket just in time to almost be bowled over by the child’s victim as the burly man charged after him, shaking his fists. The boy took one look and sprinted off again. Cassian kept moving. 

He tried to keep an eye on the squad as he shuffled forward, casting a casual glance back at where Chirrut and Baze had stopped to talk to a seller of mealy, gray-fleshed apples and ahead to where Jyn and Bodhi were pretending to be interested in a stall selling ‘genuine’ Alderaanian silks. The gray buildings that dotted either side began to grow taller as he got further in, until eventually they obscured the skyline with dilapidated towers of rusting metal, rotting wood, and peeling paint. He walked for another few minutes, the weight of his blaster steady and reassuring on his hip. He could see the end the market ahead though the Imperial installations did not cease and stretched on for another few blocks at least. 

Shouting reached his ears and he looked back, fear and alarm clenching at his gut as his mind went immediately to an image of Jyn and Bodhi being dragged away by stormtroopers. What he saw at first didn't make any sense—Bodhi was indeed running toward him with Jyn at his side, their hands tightly clasped together, but they were merely the crest of a sudden mob. Behind them Cassian caught a glimpse of white armor and he understood what they were running from. 

Jyn grabbed him by the jacket as they reached him, almost being swept right on by by the intensity of the mob. “We have to keep moving,” Cassian said. “Blend in.”

“We have to help,” Jyn countered, snatching her hand out of Bodhi’s grip. Cassian realized then that the young pilot had been dragging her along. 

“No!”

“Those could be civilians,” she argued. A new light flamed in her eyes. “They could be  _ rebels _ , Cassian.” 

“There's nothing we can do for them without exposing ourselves,” he hissed. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward into the mob, and he knew simply by the fact that he was able to do so that she would listen—this time. Before they could get a few meters, shots rang out, familiar sounding shots. “Jyn!”

“It wasn't me,” she growled back, but her anger subsided almost before she’d finished the sentence. “Where are Chirrut and Baze?”

“ _ Pfassk _ ,” Cassian muttered, but there was nothing they could do about it now—for better or worse, the two Guardians of the Whills were nowhere in sight. His grip on her wrist slid down to her hand and he gave a small tug for good measure. “Keep walking. They’ll have to find us.” 

They rejoined the hustling, shuffling mob streaming its way out of the marketplace, staying close together and keeping their heads down. More stormtroopers had appeared—white-and-black gloved hands pulling people out of the crowd seemingly at random by the arm or the shoulder or the neck. Imperial buildings loomed closer on the side as the street narrowed. 

“How much further to where we’re going?” Bodhi asked as they stumbled along. 

“We’re not at the outskirts yet,” Cassian replied. A narrow alley caught his eye. “There. Come on.” He increased his pace, cutting diagonally through the thinning crowd like a knife through hot butter and slipping into nooks and crannies among them. Walking with them, not through them, was a key skill for any Intelligence asset—but still moving faster, getting where he needed to go. 

Cassian slipped out of the crowd and ducked into the alley, Jyn and Bodhi right behind him. He let out a breath he didn't know he’d been holding as he surveyed their hiding spot. It was just deep enough for them to melt into the shadows but walled off by brick and stone on the other end, making the possibility of an ambush nigh on impossible. He suddenly realized he was still holding Jyn’s hand and released it, avoiding her eyes. Bodhi looked somewhat amused as well as the natural nervous and frightened, so Cassian avoided his eyes too. 

“We can spot them through the crowd,” Jyn said, peering out. “They aren't exactly easy to miss.” 

“Who’s not hard to miss?” Baze’s voice boomed out. Jyn spun around, pupils dilated and hand reaching for her truncheon. Bodhi jumped backwards badly. Cassian had his blaster halfway out of its holster. Baze stood at the closed-off end of the alley next to a piece of steel piping that extended up to the roof of the next building. He looked up just in time to catch Chirrut in his arms as he slid nimbly down the pole. Baze placed him gently on the ground. Both Guardians were smiling. 

“What were you doing on the roof?” Cassian asked, then shook his head. “Never mind, I don't want to know. Jyn?”

“The street is almost clear of civilians. The stormtroopers are giving chase,” she reported. “But there's more of them now. I don't think it's a good idea to go back out.”

Cassian nodded in agreement. He turned to Baze and Chirrut. “Then we go up.” He crossed over to the pole, sliding his hands along it experimentally. Then he leaped upward and locked his ankles around the bottom of it, scooting himself skyward by the strength of his arms, the soles of his boots providing some, but little, support by way of friction. His fingers throbbed at the pressure but he kept going, lugging his body past the first storey and then the second before he reached the roof. His nails scrabbled at the ledge until his hands curled around it. He let go with his legs and felt his body smack against the side of the building. With one great heave, he pulled himself over the side, breathing heavily. After giving himself a moment and a half to recover, he looked over the edge and extended a hand.

“I…can't do that,” Bodhi said, looking at him both amazed and aghast. 

“We’ll help you. Jyn?” 

“Okay.” She glanced at him, then at the pole, preparing herself. “Give me a boost, please, Baze.” The hulk of a man knelt down, interlacing his fingers palms up for her to step on. She placed one foot warily on his outstretched hands, then hoisted herself upwards, beginning the climb. Bodhi hovered uncertainly down below, eying the potential drop with apprehension, but Cassian smiled at the sight of her—it was quite possible she wouldn't have even needed the boost, in a pinch. Saw Gerrera had trained her well, and a life on the run and in Imperial labor camps hadn't hurt either. 

When she was close enough he stretched out his hand again, holding it out for the moment she decided she was ready. She pulled upwards once more, sweat beading her forehead and her cheeks flushed with the effort. Jyn took a deep breath before thrusting one hand out and off the pole towards his. He caught it, taking on as much of her weight as he could, dragging her upward. 

Suddenly her glove came off in Cassian’s hand, leaving Jyn dangling wildly. Bodhi let out a sharp cry of fear before Chirrut’s hand muffled dead center over his mouth, while Baze held out his arms in case she fell. Cassian acted quickly, on pure instinct, throwing himself towards the ledge and feeling his lower body impact hard with it as he reached his hands down as far as they would go, making a wild, desperate grab for her. His palms caught her just under the arms, right above the ribcage, and he heaved upward, somehow—miraculously, in an adrenaline-fueled feat of strength—hauled her over the edge. Her body weight bowled him over backwards with its momentum, knocking him flat on his back with her on top of him, and his skull made a nasty thunk sound as it smacked against the roof. His vision began to swim and for a moment he could only stare at her face inches from his uncomprehendingly, hands still cupping her ribcage.

“Thanks.” Jyn’s voice, breathless, reached his ears as if from far away. His lips and tongue moved but he couldn't make them speak, only watched the terror be replaced with relief in her eyes, and then a flood of concern chase away the relief. “Cassian?” She rolled off him, to the side, and came up on her knees next to his head. “Cassian, are you all right?” 

His jaw worked silently, little fluttering motions that only increased her concern. “Think so,” he managed to grind out. One uncoordinated hand lifted from his side and roved drunkenly toward the back of his head. It came away clean, and he slowly sat up. “No blood.” He turned his head painstakingly downward, all too acutely aware of the pounding within it. “Rotten wood.”

“Rotten wood saved your life,” Jyn said, looking shaken. “Head wounds are nasty.”

“Tell me something I don't know,” Cassian muttered. The relief was back in her eyes as he looked at her again. 

“Is he all right?” Baze asked perhaps a little too loudly from the ground below. Jyn offered him a hand, pulling Cassian unsteadily to his feet. He hobbled over to the ledge with two left feet, leaning more heavily on her than he was willing to admit. 

“We’re okay,” he called hoarsely. He couldn't tell if he was blinking stars out of his eyes from the head injury or whether they were simply reacting to the thick layer of smog that covered Thani. As he spoke, he was aware of Jyn’s arm across his back, her steadying hand around the far side of his waist, her finger hooked slyly on the belt loop of his pants just in case he started to tumble over the edge. 

For a self-professed loner, Jyn’s protective nature surprised him sometimes. 

His hand covered hers, a fleeting thank-you. The fog was clearing from his mind. “Who’s next? We’re in Imperial territory, remember. We should get this done quick.”

“I have your glove,” Bodhi said, holding it up with a nervous smile. He stuffed it into his belt. “And, uh…I’ll go last?”

“You'll go after Chirrut,” Baze told him with a slap on the back. The blind man accepted Baze’s step up but seemed to shimmy up the pole easier than any of them, with Jyn and Cassian each grabbing one of his hands to haul him over the ledge. Baze passed his staff up afterwards. 

Though Cassian could tell Bodhi was frightened, the young man gave no protest when Baze held out his hands for him. The pilot’s fears were ungrounded, however, and he made it up with no mishaps. Baze went last, showing off the formidable strength of his arms that his penchant for firing his repeater from a distance did not entirely showcase, but did explain his impeccable accuracy despite the massive recoil on a blaster that size. 

“We continue,” Cassian said, nodding forward. The pain in his head had subsided to a dull—massive, but dull—ache, but he must have grimaced as he spoke because Jyn was looking at him with concern again. 

“Maybe Kaytoo should—”

“I'm fine, Jyn,” Cassian forestalled her. “I've had worse. We’ve both had worse. The sooner we finish the mission, the sooner we can leave.” 

She nodded. Bodhi held out her glove out to her and she scowled at it, slipping it on. It was the tactile kind that had more grips than human skin, but those grips apparently didn't extend to  _ inside _ the glove’s interior. 

Cassian approached the edge of the roof, took a few steps back, and then ran straight for the gap, springing forward to sail across the bit of open air and land shakily on the other side. The jarring motion set his head pounding again. He waited for the others to follow, which Jyn and Bodhi did with little fanfare while Chirrut and Baze executed perfect barrel rolls off of the jump. 

They repeated the process over the next few buildings, and Cassian had to admit that rampant urbanization wasn't so bad when he was able to use it for this. They were mostly past the Imperial stations when the gaps between the buildings began to widen and the heights decrease steadily, creating both a more dangerous jump and a more painful one for their aching ankles. 

And they had now reached the outskirts of Thani.

“Do we have to jump down now?” Bodhi asked, looking at the ground below apprehensively. The pilot’s face and neck were slicked with humidity and sweat. 

“Fire escape,” Baze grunted. He nodded forward with a jut of his chin. “It's how we got into position the first time.”

“So it was you,” Jyn stated tonelessly. “That shot the troopers in the square.” 

“The Force moves darkly around a creature that is about to kill,” Chirrut said in reply. All of a sudden every member of Rogue One except Bodhi was looking at him, but Cassian didn't have the time—or the mental capacity, currently—to suss out what that could mean. 

“I said I didn't want to know,” Cassian cut them off. “Let's go.” Fearing the rusted metal they took the stairs one at a time, but it only creaked horribly rather than send them crashing to the ground. He checked the coordinates with Kaytoo and then directed them a quarter of a mile to the southeast. Before long, a single house was clearly the one they were heading for as everything else faded away to dusty, nearly inarable farmland. “Split up,” Cassian directed them. “Surround the house on three sides before moving in. We don't know what we’ll find inside.”

“I'm coming with you,” Jyn said. 

“That's not—”

“No arguments, Cassian.” Her green-gray eyes were steely. “You're not going by yourself, not after hitting your head like that. Bodhi, go with Baze and Chirrut. We’ll do two teams.” 

Bodhi looked uncertainly between Jyn and Cassian, clearly unsure whose orders to follow. 

Nevertheless, Cassian did see the wisdom in Jyn’s plan. “Fine. You three circle around back, and we’ll breach first. We don't want them to think they're under assault, so wait for my signal to follow us unless you have reason to believe we’re in trouble.”

“Really. We’re sending the two of you in to talk the man into coming with us,” Baze shook his head. 

“Better us than you,” Jyn fired back. “I can be friendly. If I want.”

“Maybe just try for non-threatening?” Bodhi suggested helpfully. 

“Shut up.”

“Move out,” directed Cassian. Only once Baze, Chirrut, and Bodhi had disappeared did he and Jyn begin to approach the house, both of their hands near, but not quite touching, their blasters. 

“It's quiet,” Jyn said. “That's good.” Cassian didn't disagree as they mounted the front steps of the small bungalow. Like the rest of Thani, it looked more than somewhat decrepit, but a planter of healthy albeit thorny flowers adorned the windowsill. The curtains were drawn but one corner had fallen awkwardly, so Cassian leaned down to peer through the sliver of visibility it left. On one side he could see a living room—armchairs, a miniscule fireplace, a table with a half-finished game of cards set out. On the other, a kitchen, and their target standing at the sink. 

“He's here,” Cassian said, standing up to his full height again. “Al-Tor Rish. No sign of any Imperials either.”

Jyn rapped her knuckles against the wooden door. No one answered. “Not entirely surprising,” she said. “You bring your lock picks?”

“How do you know about those?”

“I lock my door when I leave, Cassian.”

He suddenly caught her meaning— _ the belt _ —and felt heat under his collar. “I’ve read your file; did you bring yours?”

“Lost them to an old cellmate on Wobani in a bet,” she said. Cassian pulled out his and inserted the little strips of metal into the lock.

“What did you bet on?”

“Dinner.”

“What it would be?”

“Whether we would get it.” She rubbed her wrist absentmindedly, then pulled up her sleeve to reveal a long, puckered scar that traced around her wrist almost like half a bracelet. “Got found on regular inspection a few days later and she thought I’d ratted her out to the bucketheads.”   

The lock clicked open, ending the trip down memory lane. Cassian glanced surreptitiously behind them, but there was not another living soul in sight. He shoved the door open, hard, Jyn right behind him. Dishes shattered into the metal sink as the man dropped them. His eyes drifted toward the blaster next to the coat rack but before Cassian could even bark a warning against it, Jyn had snatched it up and stuffed it in her belt, under her vest. “We’re not here to harm you,” Cassian told him. “We’re here to get you out.”

“Who are you?” the man uttered suspiciously, fingers curled tightly over the edge of the sink. He was older than the picture in his file had made him look, with a short cut of gray-white hair and small, wary eyes surrounded by wrinkles.

“We’re rebels,” Jyn told him. “We’re here to rescue you, take you back to our base.”

“No.” Al-Tor Rish shook his head. “No. Don't need a rescue. We—I—don’t have anything to do with any rebels, or bases, or Rebellions.” His hands came off the sink, gesturing angrily toward the door. “You need to leave now.”

“We will take you by force, if necessary,” Cassian said quietly. “Or, you can make this easier for all of us.”

“For all of us?” Al-Tor demanded, a sudden fervor overtaking him. “You rebels are all the same. Fighting your battles, fighting your war—won’t accept that you lost before you even begun and making trouble for everyone else for it.”

“You weren’t always hostile to the Rebellion,” said Cassian. “We’re not asking you to fight. We just want your expertise with the azardinite.”

“Maybe there was a time where I got a bit nostalgic for the old days,” Al-Tor said, eyes hard and flinty. “A time before the Empire, before the Senate was a bunch of doddgery old fools fightin’ over scraps, before Xanatos du Crion opened up the planet to the corporatists. But that time is not now. Leaving with you would be tantamount to declaring for the Rebellion, and that will do nothing but bring a world of hurt on me and mine.”

“The Imperials are coming!” Jyn burst out, eyes blazing. “Telos—your _ planet _ —is nearly completely under their control. This is your last chance to escape.  _ We’re  _ your last chance.”

“No need to escape,” Al-Tor huffed. “Haven’t done anything yet. Don’t plan on doing anything.”

“They won’t care about that,” Jyn said with finality. “I’ve seen it. They won’t. You think the entire city of NiJedha did something wrong? The Empire doesn’t care who they kill, or when.”

“Neither does the Rebellion.” Al-Tor left the sink, apparently deciding they weren’t going to shoot him for moving. 

“There was a time when I thought that,” said Jyn, letting her voice take on a vulnerable quality. Cassian looked at her, gauging whether it was an act or not. He couldn’t tell, but that didn’t mean he didn’t recognize the words, the story she was telling. They hadn’t even met, then. “Didn’t care whose flag was flying above my head—”

“Al-Tor? What’s going on?” A new voice broke onto the scene, coming from a petite white-haired woman walking down the hallway toward them. She let out a shriek of fright, but it still took Cassian a few seconds to realize both he and Jyn had their blasters pulled out and aimed directly at her heart.

“Imara, go back to our room!” Al-Tor roared. He lunged for Jyn, trying to knock the blaster out of her hand. Her truncheon whipped out and cracked across his shoulders even as the blaster skittered across the floor to rest at Cassian’s feet. He scooped it up, shouting for Jyn to stop, don’t hurt him further. He needn’t have bothered; Jyn stood over the man breathing harshly and holding a bloodied truncheon in her left hand but Rish was clearly alive. 

“Everybody….just…stop…” Cassian said, stowing his blaster and hers and raising his palms placatingly.

All of the windows shattered at once. Two flying blurs of red and black crashed into the room with shards of glass shooting in all directions, while a third climbed through more gingerly and carrying a stun gun. 

“We heard shouting,” Baze Malbus announced, swinging his repeater around to point at each of them individually until he could identify them as not a threat. 

“This one is paranoid,” Chirrut added in a somewhat disgruntled voice, jerking his head in the direction of his partner. 

Cassian took one deep, steadying breath. “We have to go.” He stepped forward, feeling bits of glass grind against the floor under the sole of his boot, and held out his hand to Al-Tor Rish. “It’s not a request.”

“He’s injured!” The wife, Imara, flew forward, knocking Cassian’s outstretched hand aside. She placed her hands on his back, his neck. “Al-Tor, are you all right?”

“‘M fine, Imara,” the old man groaned, placing one palm on the floor to push himself skyward. 

“We have bacta packs at our ship,” Cassian informed them. “You’re more than welcome to them, once we’re on board.”

Imara’s fiery gaze turned on him. “Oh, yes—you bribe us with bacta to fix the harm that you yourselves have caused!”

“I apologize for that,” he attempted to mollify her. He met Jyn’s eyes as she flicked a bit of crimson liquid off of the truncheon. 

Her eyes turned steely. “I’m sorry…that it was necessary.”

Imara glared at them both before returning her attention to her husband. Jyn looped one of her arms under his and hauled him upwards without warning. “Bodhi,” she called as Cassian tramped forward to force Imara to her feet as well. “Bodhi.” He looked back at the cargo pilot, who was staring out the broken living room window with utter terror on his face. 

“Troopers,” Bodhi whispered as Cassian turned to look. “ _ Troopers _ !” 

Cassian sprang forward, knocking Jyn to the ground as the first spray of blaster fire peppered the house. Al-Tor fell beside them and Cassian pressed a blaster into the man’s loose grip. “I trust you won’t use it against us,” he muttered before rolling away, taking cover behind the door. Jyn moved to drag Imara closer to the sink. Baze had already flipped the table on its side and taken position behind it. His repeater went off in giant blasts. 

“You’re surrounded!” the tinny voice of a stormtrooper yelled. “Exit the building with your hands up.”

Cassian risked a quick look out the window, firing off a few shots of his own. Two stormtroopers crumpled onto the road, but there were more coming their way. 

“Chirrut, is he lying?” Baze called. 

The second Guardian looked more like he was meditating than in the middle of a firefight, but Cassian had learned better than to trust his eyes when it came to Chirrut. “No. The Force is strong, and it moves very darkly right now.” Chirrut pointed towards the back of the house, and Jyn scrambled up and into the hallway unquestioningly. 

“MTVs!”

His hopes for an easy escape fell immediately at the word. Imperial vehicles, manned by a single trooper but that rolled faster than a man could run and carried three times to firepower in a single blast. His hand dug around on his belt until he found his comlink, at which point he struggled to make himself heard over the rapid-fire of Baze’s repeater. “Kay! We need an evac, now! The Rish house!”

“So much for a quiet getaway,” the droid replied. 

“Not the time, Kay! Just get here.”

“Firing up the engines,” Kaytoo replied, before drawling, “What would you do without me.”

Cassian’s ignored the droid’s last comment in favor of firing another few blasts at the troopers. Baze moved to the back to take out a few of the MTVs, but knowing the armor plating with which they were built Cassian wasn’t sure how much good it was going to do. 

A flash of a white-and-black hand at the window across the room caught his attention, but before he could so much as reorient his blaster, Bodhi had pointed his stun gun at it and pulled the trigger, leaving the buckethead flopping around in the dirt outside. 

“You are surrounded,” his comlink informed him courtesy of Kaytoo.

“Thanks for the update,” Cassian growled. “Where are you?”

“I am going to attempt something that Lieutenant Ignioko would deem inadvisable,” the droid informed him. 

“What?”

“There is an 18% chance of blowing up the ship.”

“Kay!”

“With you distracting me, there is a 21% chance.”

Cassian became aware of the wind whipping through the house now, the rumble of a giant engine somewhere above them. Jyn ran into the room, hair falling out of its customary bun and blood smudged on her nose and cheek. “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t—” Cassian shouted back over the noise, whatever else he said completely swallowed up by the massive  _ crack  _ that followed. The roof over the kitchen crumbled and he scrambled out of the area, pulled along by Jyn. In another moment, the entire section of wall collapsed, crushed by a cargo transport.  _ Their _ cargo transport. 

The ramp descended, and Cassian could just make out the smushed bodies and cracked armor of two stormtroopers sticking out from underneath the ship’s main body. Kaytoo turned around from the pilot’s seat to look at him. “You’re welcome.”

“Let’s go!” Cassian grasped the wrist of Al-Tor Rish and lugged him onto the transport, propping him up against the side of the ship near the rear control panel. Jyn followed with Imara, who was no longer protesting but instead white-faced and silent. Chirrut stabbed his staff over the rim of a window—eliciting a sharp grunt of pain—before running up the ramp with Bodhi close behind him. Baze’s repeater stopped firing, creating an eerie sort of silence despite the sharp pings of trooper’s blaster shots still around them. The man bounded up the ramp as well and Cassian pounded the hatch close button while Bodhi switched places with Kaytoo in the front. The ship flared to life again, rising quickly into the sky. 

_ Boom _ . The ship jerked dangerously to one side, throwing them all to the left in a tangle of limbs. “What was that?” Cassian demanded. 

“They’re shooting at us,” Kaytoo informed him calmly. 

“But blasters couldn’t—” Bodhi began, looking at the droid. 

“The MTVs,” Jyn said. She had scrambled to her feet to peer through the port window. “Bodhi!”

“I got it,” the pilot said, sweeping the ship skyward and banking steeply to the right. Cassian felt the bolt pass them by the turbulence it caused, but it didn’t hit. He silently hoped the Imperial Flight Academy’s program was as rigorous as the holo-ads proclaimed it to be. Then again, Bodhi had never failed him before. 

“You know there’s a blockade,” Al-Tor’s rough voice croaked. 

Pfassk, the blockade. “Jump to lightspeed as soon as you can, Bodhi,” directed Cassian, unable to keep the tension out of his voice.

“We’re still in atmo!”

“As soon as we get out of it, then. Aim for whatever patch of clear space you can see.”

“If I’m wrong by even a few degrees…” The pilot sounded nervous now. 

Jyn walked to the front, placing her hand on his shoulder. “This is what you do,” she told him. 

“I will perform the calculations for you,” Kaytoo added. 

Bodhi sounded marginally more confident as he said, “Okay.”

The ship rocked and trembled some as it accelerated into the upper atmosphere. One final bump and then…the ship became still, floating in the vacuum of space. The blockade—an armada of heavily-armed grey and white ships—loomed ahead of them. Already smaller vessels were coming larger and larger into view; Bodhi’s console beeped incessantly at him as it warned him of target locks. 

“Go,” Cassian said, but it was needless—the stars became streaks outside the window as the cabin lurched forward. 

Hyperspace. 

Bodhi turned around in his chair, relief painted all over his face. “We made it.”

“Set course for Yavin. Same one we took here. And make sure the scans stay clear,” Cassian said. The last thing they needed was to lead the Imperials back to the base. 

The pilot smiled. “Yes, Captain.”

“And good work, Bodhi,” he allowed. He looked around the cabin as Jyn joined them, pulling out the medical kit. “Is everyone all right?”

“You could see to my back,” Al-Tor suggested, although he didn’t sound as angry at them as before. 

“Let me,” Imara said, looking at her husband. “Lie down.” Jyn wordlessly handed her a bacta pack and a compress. Imara tore away some of the shirt to gain better access to the injury. It was merely a flesh wound but near enough to the spine that Cassian grimaced. 

He looked to Baze and Chirrut. “Are you two all right?”

“No injuries,” Baze announced, hitting the side of his faithful repeater. 

Cassian nodded, then moved towards Jyn, who was pulling at the sleeve over her shoulder. Cassian could see a thin blaster burn along her cream-colored skin. A graze only, but still. He met her eyes and wondered whose the blood on her face was. He opened a bacta packet for her and watched as she applied it, jaw locking on contact at the sting. It slackened almost immediately though, as the healing properties of the bacta began to work. “Anywhere else?” he questioned quietly. 

She shook her head. “How about you? How’s your head?” 

His hand reached up to feel. “Might be a bump. I can’t quite tell. But I…feel fine. Just a slight buzzing but it’s going away still.”

Her hand followed his to the back of his head, fingers tangling with his hair and pressing lightly to his scalp. “Here?”

“No. A little to the—ow. Yeah, there.”

“Sorry.” She withdrew her hand.

“It’s fine.”

A small smile played about her mouth. “If you say so, Captain Andor.”

“I do, Sergeant Erso.”

Her lips quirked upward even more and she lifted her hand to wipe some of the sweat off her brow. It came away with a smear of blood, causing the smile to drop off her face. “Shit.” Jyn reached for the wet clothes in the med kit while trying to keep pressure on the bacta pack latched to her left arm. 

“Let me,” Cassian said, taking the cloth from her. She looked uncertain for a moment but surrendered it, allowing him to dab away the blood and grime from her forehead and cheeks and the little spot on her nose. Even layered in filth, Cassian thought, Jyn was a certain kind of beautif—

No, he was not going to complete that thought. Even if they were sleeping together. 

Sometimes.

Sort of.

Bodhi cleared his throat nervously. Cassian looked up to see the pilot seated beside them, having left Kaytoo on the controls. “Course set for Yavin IV. Should be there in about four standard hours.”

“Good,” said Cassian. “How was your thirteenth mission?”

The pilot ducked his head. “I can’t believe you’re still counting.”

“Kaytoo started it,” Cassian defended.

“Inadvertently, of course,” Jyn said before the droid could cut in. She adopted a teasing voice she reserved for Rogue One only, and especially for Bodhi. “So, not regretting your choice to defect? And not bored?”

“Definitely not bored,” he said. “Being a cargo pilot for the Empire… I don’t think you guys realize exactly how many hours alone in a cockpit that is.” He smiled. “That was, uh, actually kind of cool… I mean, I’ve never broken a window before like that…”

“Welcome to the Rebellion,” Cassian said, at the same time as Jyn’s, “Welcome to teenagehood.”

They both looked at her in amusement. “What?” she asked. “I was with Saw then.” A spark flashed through her eyes, a little challenging, a little sad. “This is a Rebellion, isn’t it? I rebelled.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their mission has repercussions, but not all of them bad.

“You really shouldn't’ve skipped medical,” Jyn said accusingly as she dropped her belt on the table. 

Cassian turned around. He hadn't heard her come in, but then again he’d been preoccupied with toweling off his hair from the shower and hanging the towel back on its hook. He was dressed though, had dressed in the ‘fresher—he’d been expecting her. 

Even though he knew that was a dangerous thing to do with Jyn Erso, a woman who went out of her way to defy expectations. Defy everything, really—expectations, orders, rules. It was both infuriating and something he appreciated a lot in her. 

“They would've just told me I'm fine, because I am,” Cassian waved her off. “I don't really like being poked and prodded.”

She gritted her teeth but let it go. “Fine.” 

He moved towards his side of the bed and slipped under the covers with a sigh. She remained frozen. “Coming?”

The muscles in her jaw worked for a second. “Are you sure—”

“Jyn.”

She crawled into bed beside him, curling up on her side. He let out a deep breath, and, sometime later, fell asleep. 

A bantha was sitting on his skull. Crushing it. Obliterating it. Disintegrating it into stardust, filling his head with pain. 

_ Stardust _ . The word lingered in his head longer than it should have, trailing a sense of importance that he couldn't put his finger on amidst the pain. 

Someone was shaking his shoulder roughly, a voice like a roar in his ears, but when he opened his eyes the light was blinding, like staring into the twins suns on the solstice on Tatooine. 

“Cassian!” The voice took shape. “Cassian!”

“Jyn,” he mumbled around the excruciating pain in his head. He forced his eyes open again, forced them to focus on her face. Her skin was the color of alabaster, eyes wild. “Head…hurts,” he whispered. 

“I know,” she replied. He realized his hands were clasped tightly around his own head, as if his fingers were trying to crush his own skull. “Come on. Med bay.”

He nodded feebly, setting off a dizziness unmatched by anything he had felt before. Vaguely he was aware of Jyn’s hands on his calves, sliding his legs out of bed and orienting them toward the ground. 

“Can you stand?” she asked. Her arm hooked under his and she lugged him to his feet. His knees buckled beneath him and black tinged on the edge of his vision. 

“I'm going to get help,” she said, moving for the commlink on the desk. 

“No. Can do it…with you,” Cassian said. “Just give me…a moment.” 

“You're insane,” Jyn told him, but didn't move. 

He took a few steadying breaths. “Okay.” 

She lifted him up again, and somehow he made his legs work. Waves of pain washed over his brain with every beat of his fast-hammering heart. “The lift,” he said when they were out in the hallway. Jyn shot him a where-did-you-think-I-was-headed look but Cassian couldn't bring himself to care. He leaned heavily against her once the elevator doors closed, head spinning. 

“We need to stop doing this,” he murmured. Her eyebrows knit together in confusion, so he added, “In the lifts.”

The doors slid open near the top of the main ziggurat. He staggered stepping out, Jyn supporting him. A medical droid spotted them as it whizzed down the hallway and raised the alarm, an ear-piercing sound so strong that Cassian let go of Jyn altogether to clamp his hands around his ears. He fell to the ground, and the blackness swallowed him whole.

* * *

 

_ Whoosh-whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh.  _ His eyelids cracked open, revealing a blurry Jyn sitting at his bedside.  _ Whoosh-whoosh.  _

“He has regained consciousness,” the medical droid announced. 

Jyn jerked, as if she had fallen asleep, then put her hands—cold—on his wrist. “Cassian?”

“What happened?” he mumbled. His tongue felt thick and ungainly. 

“I woke up and you were trashing in your sleep, pressing your hands to your head. We came here and you collapsed in the hallway,” Jyn said. Her voice took on a slightly accusatory tone. “I told you you should’ve gotten checked out after hitting your head on Telos.”

“I was fine when we got back,” he protested feebly.

“You have suffered a cerebral edema. Your brain has had swelled 4% larger than its normal size,” the droid informed him. 

“That explains the headache.”

The medical droid wasn’t amused. “You are to be under supervision for the next three days.” Cassian frowned, pushing himself upwards on the bed and opened his mouth to argue. “And will not participate in any missions for one week.” It eyed him haughtily. “Please refrain from developing any further injuries through reckless actions. Medical supplies do  _ not  _ grow on trees.” It wheeled away, affronted. 

Cassian slumped back. “On one hand I'm impressed with the programmer’s ability to incorporate idioms; on the other, I'm not sure what happened to the old-fashioned idea of bedside manner.” 

“Because you did such a bang-up job on Kaytoo,” Jyn said. She handed him the cup of water at his bedside when he reached for it, trying to wet his parched lips. 

“Usually he's here,” Cassian told her once he’d drained the cup. “Guarding my bed, or something.”

“I'm guarding your bed,” Jyn told him. Her hand left his wrist to join the other in her lap, twisting her fingers around each other. “I didn't tell anyone. Didn't know what to say.”

“That's fine,” he assured her. “It's better without an audience. How long has it been since…?”

“Six hours or so,” Jyn replied. “They almost had to cut out a section of your skull to release the pressure but since we were able to get here so fast, the drugs they pumped you full of were enough…”

“It's a good thing you were there, then,” Cassian told her. He reached for her hand, pulling it toward him and running his thumb along the back of it softly. “Thank you.” 

The medical droid wheeled in, interrupting whatever sort of moment they had been having. It pressed down a lever that released the bars on the edge of the bed that normally kept patients from being able to fall off. “Please stand,” it droned. “You are being released.”

“What?” Jyn asked, while Cassian just stared at it in confusion. 

The droid ignored her. “Please stand. You are being released.” 

“Why?” Cassian asked. “Do they need me?”

“A damaged troop transport is arriving from Lothal. The wounded will be here in approximately four minutes. Your bed is being requisitioned for more severe injuries.”

“You can't do that,” Jyn protested. “You just said he needed to be under supervision for three days!”

The droid looked at her with disdain, then used its tri-fingered hand to pull open a nearby drawer. Its hand removed something, then shot out to press a sticker to the upper part of Jyn’s vest.  _ I'm a medi-helper!  _ the sticker read in bold green letters. Underneath,  _ Protecting the Rebellion one vaccination at a time!  _ “You are now qualified to provide supervision,” the droid informed her. 

Cassian couldn't help but laugh at the stunned look on her face. 

The head of the droid whirred as it turned to face him again. “Please stand. You are being released.” 

“All right, all right,” Cassian said, motioning for Jyn to give him a hand. One clasped his tightly, the other wrapped around his shoulders to steady him. He stood up carefully, afraid his legs would buckle beneath him again, but they held steady. 

The further they moved out of the med bay, the more they could hear the klaxon blaring, confirming what the medical droid had said. Only a catastrophic mission with many wounded—besides an attack on the base itself—would cause Mothma to set off the alarm in order to clear the corridors and call able-bodied personnel to assist with the wounded. He and Jyn headed back to his room without discussion, eager to get out of the way. 

He had to be careful with his steps. Placing his foot down too harshly jostled his head and neck in a way one would only realize occurred with a head injury, but overall he felt remarkably okay, if a bit tired. Cassian’s plan was to sleep some hours more back in his quarters, and by the looks of her Jyn wasn't about to complain. Dark circles ringed her eyes, though they were bright and alert and  _ concerned _ again. And maybe something else? Whatever it was, he couldn't place it, and got the feeling she was doing her best to hide it from him. 

Cassian and Jyn passed out on the bed almost simultaneously, for once not giving any thought to how much space they had left between them. 

That night, they met up with the rest of the team, all of whom had been wondering where they’d been, and told them the story, albeit a version in which Jyn hadn't been in Cassian’s  _ room _ at the time of the brain-swelling incident. Judging by their reactions, Bodhi bought it wholeheartedly; he was almost as worried for Cassian’s well-being—he felt just fine now!—as Jyn was acting. Baze and Chirrut accepted their words without so much as a raised eyebrow from either of them, although the blind man did murmur something in his partner’s ear. K-2SO…Cassian couldn't tell if he detected the subterfuge or not, but he was keeping quiet about it if he did, which was good enough for Cassian, and instead complaining that Jyn hadn't come found him immediately after the captain was stable. 

It was only after dinner that Cassian realized just how serious about the medical droid’s instruction of supervision Jyn was going to be. He explained that he was headed to get a new stack of reports from Intelligence and that he would meet her back at his quarters, but she refused to let him go alone. 

“Jyn, you're not allowed down there,” Cassian told her, halfway between exasperation and appreciation for the effort she was making. 

“They’ll have to make an exception,” she replied stubbornly. 

“They won't. Draven is very serious about security,” Cassian said. Especially with a spy afoot. A spy which some suspected Jyn of being. “It's not far, once I leave the lift,” he promised. “I'll be right back here in…sixty seconds.” 

“I'm coming with you in the lift,” Jyn insisted, stepping forward into it and crossing her arms. “I won't get out, and then Draven gets to keep his secrets. But I'm not letting you go alone. You said it yourself—we have a bad history of almost dying in lifts.”

Cassian couldn't argue with that. He stepped inside as well. “Close your eyes before the door opens.” She shot him a you-can't-be-serious look. 

“Jyn…”

“I helped  _ steal  _ those plans,” she said crossly before doing as he asked. He pressed the button for the floor they needed. When the doors opened, she reminded him, “Sixty seconds.” 

Cassian gave her a reassuring touch on the shoulder before leaving her there, heading into the bowels of the Alliance Intelligence Center. It was mostly empty as always, the hum of machines buzzing in his ears and the faintest trace of hushed voices. The inner sanctum to Draven’s office was closed and locked as always, but there was a small safe located near the door to which Cassian and the other high ranking operatives had keys. He pulled a small stack of paperwork out of the safe and sifted through it to find the reports he was looking for, scanning the classified documents for keyword quickly, aware of the ticking clock. At the bottom were the files he had requested pulled up specifically, alphabetized and of different thicknesses but still all relatively thin—Erso, Îmwe, Malbus, Rook. 

Finding the reports he was most qualified to analyze, he stuffed the rest back in the drawer and slipped the files he had requested of Draven surreptitiously between them. He met Jyn at the lift, hitting the button to take them back up to the main levels. 

Her eyes opened. “You're two seconds late.”

“You sound like Kaytoo.”

Jyn’s voice took on a mechanical quality, mimicking his droid partner. “There is a 67% chance I am going to hit you if you ever say that again.”

Cassian smiled. “You do remember Jedha, right?”

Her lips twitched upward as the lift slowed to a stop. “You just need to stop mouthing off so much, Cassian.”

“Oh, I'm the one with a problem with mouthing off?” he asked as they stepped out. “I seem to recall  _ someone _ getting into a shouting match with Lt. Commander Fafnik in the mess hall a week or so ago.”

Jyn scowled. “He's a misogynistic asshole.”

Cassian thought about it a moment. “He is that.” 

They reached his door, and Cassian opened it for her. “I assume you're coming in?” he teased lightly. 

“For the next two days, where you go, I go. Have to make sure you're not overdoing it,” Jyn shot back, glancing down at the small pile of folders he was carrying. “It was your  _ brain _ that caused all of this…”

“True,” Cassian agreed, following her inside. The lights were somewhat dim already, betraying how late it was. “Not planning on touching these tonight—”

“Good.”

“—but I was planning on taking a shower.” He eyed her, heart palpitating frantically but going through with his next sentence recklessly anyway. “What are you going to do, follow me into the shower as well?”

“Maybe I will,” Jyn challenged. They both stared at each other for a second, the sudden implications of what she had just said freezing them in place even as heat rose to their cheeks. Then Jyn smiled, obviously covering as if it was a joke that she was hoping he’d just laugh off. “If you're not out in twenty I'm busting down that door.” 

“I don't doubt it, knowing you,” Cassian smiled. He selected a change of clothes out of the drawer and then closed the door to the ‘fresher behind him. 

A hot shower had him feeling much better afterward, although he hadn't even been feeling that bad to begin with—whatever drugs the medical droid had given him seemed to have done their jobs well. He was pleased to see Jyn had taken the opportunity to change her clothes too, instead of standing with her ear pressed to the door the entire time as he’d feared. 

Cassian was fine the next morning as well. And the next. He wasn’t quite sure when Jyn’s constant tailing of him became more frustrating than endearing… She followed him to breakfast. To a meeting in the council chambers, where she had a very loud shouting match over a guard who initially wouldn’t let her in and where Mon Mothma kept giving Cassian very disapproving looks. To the shooting range, which led to a confrontation with yet another guard over the merits of having a range reserved for Rebellion-certified snipers only. To lunch. Back to his room where she watched him read classified reports, which she then kept peeking into despite the fact she didn’t have clearance and if anyone ever found out they’d both be metaphorically strung up by the ankles. 

On one hand, he admitted even to himself that he enjoyed spending time with her; on the other, they both were people who had previously lived very solitary lives. As Kaytoo had put it in the brief moment he’d managed to slip away from her, Jyn Erso had turned overnight into a very aggressive, overprotective bulldog. 

“Getting into it with Draven was not a great idea,” Cassian told her shortly as he placed yet another stack of reports on his desk. 

“So?” Jyn asked. “I get into it with everyone who has a problem with me. Or you. Or Bodhi. Or Chirrut and Baze…”

“Putting your lack of self-restraint when it comes to punching people  _ aside _ , he didn't do anything to you, and he's head of Alliance Intelligence.”

A trace of insolence slipped into her tone. “For a man in charge of  _ intelligence _ …”

“He gets things done,” Cassian replied, annoyance levels creeping upward. “And he does it efficiently.” He looked down at the papers, biting the inside of his cheek before saying, “Pfassk, I missed the report on Dathomir.”

She sidled up to him. “Do you need it?” 

“Yes,” Cassian lied, not looking at her. “I'll just go get…” She was standing by the door now, he could tell. 

“No, Jyn, just stay here,” he tried. 

There was a teasing tone to her voice as she said, “Cassian, you know how this works now…” Somehow that only increased his frustration. 

“Jyn!” It came out a little louder than he meant to, so he forced himself to take a deep breath, meet her green-gray eyes. “I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I need you to stop tailing me everywhere.” 

“The medical droid said three days.”

“I don't give a  _ pfassk _ what the kriffing droid said!” Cassian exploded. “I just need to—” He stopped, unable to say the truth:  _ I just need to meet with Mothma about the spy she thinks one of Rogue One is.  _ But of course he couldn't tell Jyn that—Cassian was a good little soldier, following orders, lying to the people he cared about. It suddenly occurred to him that it might not be  _ Jyn _ he was frustrated with, but judging by the bright, hard look in her eyes it was too late. 

“Need to what, Cassian, go off somewhere on your own so that your brain can kriff itself up again and actually succeed in killing you this time?”

“That's not going to happen and you know it!” Cassian scoffed. “I managed fine on my own before you came along, you know!” He wasn't quite sure where the words were coming from but was all too happy to fling them in his anger. His blood pressure was mounting from the stress; he could feel it—the stress of wondering what bad news Mothma might have for him, the stress of having to keep all of this from Jyn, the stress of not even really knowing why he's arguing with her right now except that he felt so  _ done _ . 

She blinked. Hard. “Then you shouldn't have risked your life for me,” Jyn said coldly. Her throat swallowed convulsively, and then before he even knew what was happening she was screaming at him. “You shouldn't be treating me differently! Because that's not how this—hell, whatever it is—works, Cassian. It can't work that way and I won't let it.” She glared at him through a film of tears. 

Cassian was dumbfounded. “What? Jyn, what are you talking about?”

“The only reason you're hurt—that you almost  _ died _ —is because of me! Because you tried to pull me up,” she yelled. It dawned on Cassian that the strange look he’d been seeing in her eyes ever since the med bay was guilt. How could he not have realized that before? 

“It's no less than I did on Jedha, or Scarif,” he said carefully, trying to calm her down. Her fingers were clenched tightly around the door handle, a sure sign she was about to bolt. Jyn Erso would be without a doubt the last to back down from a firefight or an old-fashioned brawl with fists, but when it came to emotions she was a skittish as they came. “It's the exact same thing. I'm not treating you any differently, Jyn—I've always had your back.”

“Not at the expense of the mission,” Jyn uttered. “When the troopers appeared at the house on Telos, you pushed me down instead of Al-Tor. He was the mission. He was much more valuable to the Alliance than me. But you pushed me down instead.” With that, she fled. 

“You were supporting him, the only reason he was standing! If you went down, he did too!”   
Cassian shouted after her. The door clicked shut, leaving him alone.

* * *

 

What Mothma wanted was much smaller than Cassian had conflated in his head. Nothing to do with the spy. Nothing to do with Rogue One. A blasted state visit from an Alderaanian princess and a heads-up on their upcoming move to a frozen wastoid of a planet, that was what he had fought with Jyn over. None of it was worth it, and all of it caused the bitter taste in his mouth and stubborn crease between his eyes. 

The idea of sleep seemed the remotest of possibilities as he was lying in bed that night. Jyn screaming at him and Jyn close to tears replayed over and over again in his head, dualities of the same guilt-ridden coin. Her guilt was ridiculous, and he would have to make sure she knew that first thing the next morning. But how to say it? 

He thought he understood her now, looking back on it. Everyone she’d ever cared about had left her at one point. Her father. Saw Gerrera. Her mother, whose death was quite possibly more relevant to this situation, because she hadn't left her willingly. 

Jyn trusted him to never leave her behind, right? After careful consideration, he thought so. He trusted her not to leave the Rebellion, and as she’d so flippantly told him once,  _ trust goes both ways.  _

So then it was more the case of Lyra Erso. Cassian had read the file that Saw had made—sent to the Rebellion as the first they’d heard from him and his band of freedom fighters in years and sent after he’d left Jyn on her own, as if to protect her from being targeted by the Rebellion by convincing them she was a friendly—and it covered enough for Cassian to know how it must have felt to Jyn. To have seen her mother gunned down. 

It occurred to him that she didn't want to lose anyone else, especially not on her account. 

It occurred to him that she may not want to care enough for the eventuality of losing yet another person to hurt. 

It occurred to him that by joining the Rebellion, by being a part of Rogue One, by  _ showing up here almost every night _ she was losing the battle with herself. 

It occurred to Cassian that Jyn Erso was scared. 

He resolved never to lock his door against her again.

When he woke in the middle of the night with jaw locked and muscles trembling, she was there, breathing deeply beside him. Her body was curved, closer than she had ever been before, her shoulder tucked against him and hip lightly touching his. He listened to her breathe, the steady rhythm gradually coaxing his pounding heart to match, to slow. Close once more to sleep, Cassian gently laid an arm across her stomach.

In the morning, a whispered, “I’m sorry,” was all that passed between them before she slipped away. 

It was enough.

They never talked about it again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> K-2SO does K-2SO things.

Falling into bed the next night was a glorious relief. One, he wanted to kill Draven, and being in bed made sure he couldn’t strangle the man before he even realized he was doing it. Two, training teenaged rebels—sons and daughters of pilots, fighters, and the like on Yavin, as he had been once—as recruits for Intelligence was a serious pain in the ass, and this was the one sanctum in which they could not run up to him asking for pointers or tips or thrice-blasted  _ stories _ of his own operations. Seeing as it was merely an elementary session in which Cassian was supposed to analyze and recommend a few to Draven to induct into the program, it was not classified, and Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut had all come to watch. Cassian swore to himself that he had not been as green as those twelve when Draven was recruiting him, and the day had ended with Cassian basically informing his recruits quite loudly outside the mess hall that they would never amount to anything if they couldn’t even remember their cover stories.

As she was wont to do, Jyn showed up once the lights were nearly completely out and Cassian pretended he was asleep until she was tucked in beside him, the curve of her body pressing lightly against his. He hadn’t bothered feigning sleep while she had been tailing him day in and day out, but with a resume of his normal activity on the base he was reluctant to disrupt the old status quo.

He sighed, his eyelids falling shut.

Out of the darkness, a voice, male and mechanical: “Hello, Jyn.”

She shrieked; Cassian jumped more inches into the air than he’d like to admit and hit the button to turn on the emergency lights. Jyn yanked the sheets up to cover herself though they were always both fully clothed and went for the blaster she never felt the need to bring.

“An intriguing reaction,” K-2SO commented. He looked directly at Jyn, his voice both observational and accusatory. “You and Cassian are sleeping together.”

“We’re not  _ sleeping together _ , Kay,” Cassian said, trying to get his breathing back to normal. He removed his hand from the blaster on his nightstand. “Just…next to each other. Sometimes.”

Jyn bolted, swinging her legs out of the bed, grabbing her belt, and vanishing out the door. Honestly, at this point Cassian couldn’t blame her. “Now look what you’ve done,” he told the droid, glaring at him.

“Mon Mothma directed both of us to document anything suspicious,” Kaytoo reminded him. “This was suspicious.”

“You weren’t supposed to be investigating me!” yelled Cassian.

The droid sniffed. “Jyn was acting very suspiciously.”

“Not because she’s a spy!” Cassian forced himself to take a long, deep breath so as to not throttle the droid in front of him and smash his circuits to bits. “Kay, you will not document this. You will not tell anyone about it.”

“There is a 56% chance that what you two are engaged in will end up with one of you—“

“Kay! I don't want to know. Just promise me you won't say anything. And that you'll apologize to Jyn for invading her privacy.”

“Fine.”

Cassian fell back onto the bed with a huff. “How did you even get in here?”

“Your door was unlocked.”

“But we would’ve heard you come—“

“I hid in the refresher.”

“When?” Cassian demanded.

“While you were in the shower. There is a 93% chance that the level of awareness you demonstrated in the refresher will get you killed on your next mission,” Kaytoo informed him.

“Kay…”

“If the unwise security practice of leaving your door unsecured as you sleep does not result in your demise before then.”

“Kay, get out of my room,” Cassian said.

* * *

 

He tracked down Jyn outside the mess hall and stopped in the hallway about thirty feet from her, looking expectantly at K-2SO who, as usual, was accompanying him to breakfast. “Well?”

“I do not see the point of this exercise,” the droid told him. 

“People like their privacy, Kay. Me and Jyn included.”

“If you are sleeping together—” 

“Kay!” Cassian hissed, looking around. The nearest rebels exchanged amused glances, and the closest choked on his cup of nonalcoholic zoochberry juice. 

“—then you are receiving far less privacy than if you slept separately. Your premise does not make sense.” 

“Just do what I said,” Cassian sighed. With a dramatically synthesized huff, the droid walked forward towards Jyn. She noticed his presence when he came within about five feet of her, turning to face him with a deep scowl on her face. For a moment they just stared at each other. 

“I apologize for invading your privacy.” K-2SO continued down the hallway, done with the conversation. 

Jyn was visibly surprised, but not for long. “Cassian said you had to, huh?” she called after him. 

Only then did he approach, watching the emotions flicker through her eyes as she saw him—annoyance, uncertainty, anger—before she shut it down. “Sorry about him,” Cassian said. “Are you…okay?”

“Someone should program him some manners.” She looked down, worrying her bottom lip, then up at him again. “He won't tell anyone?”

“No. I've made that clear.”

“Good.” She pushed past him into the mess hall, but it wasn’t an angry push. The slight press of her body against his was as familiar to her as it was to him now. He followed her inside after a few seconds, letting a few people get between them in the breakfast line. The porridge was an especially unappetizing shade of gray today, but he got some anyway and a few protein packets to sprinkle over the mush as well. He sat next to Jyn at Rogue One’s usual table, joining Baze and Chirrut and Bodhi coming a minute or so behind them. 

“No K-2SO today?” Chirrut asked.

“Haven’t seen him,” Cassian lied. 

“So, um, are the rumors true?” Bodhi said, taking a seat across from Cassian. Baze set down his spoon, exchanging glances with Chirrut, who looks to be hiding a smile.

“What rumors?” Cassian replied carefully. He determinedly did not look at Jyn. 

“Is the Alderaanian princess really coming to visit?” 

The smiles died on the Guardians’ faces. “Oh…yes,” Cassian said, relieved. Then he remembered about the spy. “But you didn't hear it from me. You didn't hear it at all.”

“Right,” Bodhi smiled. “I've never met a princess before. Wonder what she's like.”

“She's…something. Kind of reminds me of you, Jyn,” Cassian said. A spitfire, he was thinking, when she wanted to be. Determined. And completely willing to do what needed to be done herself. 

She raised an eyebrow. “Me?”

He took one look at her expression and sighed. “Nevermind.”

“Take the compliment, little sister,” Baze spoke unexpectedly. 

Cassian felt his ears go red, watched Bodhi’s eyes bulge before the pilot quickly began scooping mush into his mouth and trying his best to appear small and invisible. 

“Baze!” Chirrut reprimanded, laughter clear in his voice. “I thought we agreed, no meddling.” 

“Meddling with…there's nothing to meddle with,” Cassian said weakly. There was a squeezing sensation near his knee, and he realized Jyn’s hand was gripping his leg hard under the table. 

Baze turned to Chirrut, then stood and lifted his nearly empty tray. “Sitting with these two fools…” He shook his head and stomped away. 

There was a pause, and then the blind man said, “He's right. We should go, Bodhi.”

“But I'm not—” Baze’s large hand nearly lifted him out of his seat by the scruff of the neck. “Okay, okay…” 

Cassian avoided Jyn’s gaze. “I'm going to kill Kaytoo.”

“Get in line.” Her spoon plunked into her bowl, appetite seemingly diminished. 

He found himself not knowing what to say next, eating alone with her. It had happened before, of course, what with late arrivals from missions and such, but never so…pointedly. “How…how’d you sleep?” he asked lamely. 

She gave him a  _ that's the best you can come up with?  _ look but answered anyway. “Fine. You?”

“Yeah, same. Fine.” 

They lapsed into silence again, until a familiar clomp, clomp of metal on stone caused Cassian to turn around. His droid took a seat across from the two of them at the table, overly long legs bumping its underside and causing their dishes to rattle on their trays. “Baze has informed me you are on a date,” Kaytoo said by way of explanation. Jyn flushed and glared at the droid.

“That's not…” Cassian said, and then hissed, “So you decide to come and join?”

“To make the best of this unfortunate scenario, I decided to use the opportunity to observe human mating rituals and gather more data on their formation and effect on human brain chemistry,” Kaytoo replied. Cassian’s eyes widened but he barreled onward. “So far I have documented an increase in risky or secretive behavior, along with certain protective tendencies.” 

“Cassian,” Jyn said. He looked at her, almost afraid of what she would say. He could read nothing in her eyes as she pointed at K-2SO. “Deal with him. Please.” She stood up and exited the mess hall. 

“It would appear Jyn Erso has become more accustomed to my assertions about you being a mating pair,” the droid observed. “How shall I document your feelings about this development, Cassian? On a level of one to ten, with one being—” 

“No documenting!” he growled. “No observing. Leave us alone, Kay; it’s none of your business.” 

“I will add ‘shortness of temper’ to your list of symptoms,” Kaytoo sniffed. “And I wouldn't have to collate my own data if you would keep me updated.” 

“Updated on… We don't even have a relationship!”

“Even I can see it…and I am blind!” came Chirrut’s voice out of nowhere. 

Kaytoo looked at Cassian, something smug about the tilt of his sculpted metal face. “Exactly.”

* * *

He was sure she wouldn't show up after the disaster that was Kaytoo’s personal space protocols, but, in retrospect, Jyn was nothing if not unpredictable. His bed dipped as she silently crawled in next to him sometime after midnight, and Cassian stayed awake a long while after listening to the softness of her breathing and feeling the soaring of his heart, spreading that unfamiliar feeling of  _ happiness _ through his veins all the way to his fingertips. 

Cassian moved a strand of errant hair off her forehead with a feather-light touch, wondering what it would be like to press his lips to the smooth skin of her forehead. 

He opted for something safer instead, knowing she was asleep, whispering, “Can I stop pretending to be asleep when you come in now?”  

To his horror she twisted away from him—blast, blast,  _ blast— _ but then settled again even closer, arm brushing against his. “No,” she replied, and in the darkness Cassian nearly missed the teasing quirk of a smile on her face. 


End file.
